Fred D. Miller, Jr.
The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2005) Vol. XLIII
Plato on the Rule of Reason Fred D. Miller, Jr. Bowling Green State University
“Isn’t it appropriate for the rational part to rule…?” (Rep. IV.441e4)
1. Introduction: Another Footnote to Plato The rule of reason is the principle that a system should be ruled by its rational part. Although this principle was anticipated by several early Greek philosophers, Plato was the first to articulate it clearly, to offer a justification for it, and to investigate its political applications in detail. 1 The rule of reason is associated with a rationalist view of political legitimacy: a regime is legitimate insofar as the authority (whether it is a monarch, assembly, elected officials, or, more abstractly, a constitution and laws) exercises power in a rational manner. This is opposed to a voluntarist view of political legitimacy: a regime is legitimate insofar as the authority exercises power in a way that expresses or conforms to the general will of the community.2 For a voluntarist theory of legitimacy, rationality is valuable only instrumentally, on the grounds that rational deliberation is the most effective way of carrying out the popular will. In contrast, for a rationalist view, consent is at best a criterion of legitimacy, on the grounds that the people voluntarily support the rulers when they do the right thing; but the governed may fail to consent if, for example, they are too irrational (or simply unwilling) to recognize that the government is legitimate. Political philosophers have divided over this issue, with some influential theorists (e.g., Plato and Aristotle) favoring reason and others (e.g., Hobbes and Rousseau) the will, although some (e.g., Kant and Hegel) attempt to accommodate both. The rule of reason is also associated with a particular view of legislation: The statesman (πολιτικÒ˚) or legislator (νοµοθ°τη˚) has a role analogous to that of the craftsman (δηµιουργÒ˚). 3 Just as a sculptor, for example, creates a statue by imposing a certain shape on a mass of clay according to a model (παράδειγµα), the legislator bestows a constitution on 50
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preexisting materials (the population) according to a political ideal grasped by reason. This is very different from the voluntarist view of the legislator as a guide to the people in carrying out their general will.4 The rule of reason is first promulgated in Plato’s Republic, which argues that the individual soul and the city have an analogous tripartite structure and that the city and the soul should each be ruled by its respective rational part. Although this analogy is controversial, it helped set the agenda for future psychology and political philosophy. For psychology the issue is: Is reason the natural ruler over the passions, or ought it to be their slave? In politics it is: Does the legitimacy of the state derive from the rationality of the rulers, or does political rationality have merely an instrumental role of efficiently carrying out the general will? My project here is to reconstruct the rule of reason as a political principle in Plato’s Republic and to consider whether it is still a theory worth considering.5 It might seem obvious that the rule of reason should not be taken seriously because it gives rise to a succession of paradoxes which Socrates himself compares to waves of laughter that threaten to drown him in ridicule and contempt (V.473c6-9). 6 On the grounds that it is used to buttress Socrates’ totalitarian utopia, it might be supposed that the rule of reason is inherently illiberal and antidemocratic. In this paper, however, I shall argue that the rule of reason can be distinguished and detached from the controversial proposals advanced in the Republic, so that it may still be worthy of serious consideration by modern political philosophers. 2. The Rule of Reason: Three Basic Principles The rule of reason is one of three basic principles at work at the end of Republic IV. The first is that a thing is in a correct condition if, and only if, it exhibits proper order. This principle is implicit in the analogy between health and justice in the Republic, but it is asserted explicitly in a parallel passage in the Gorgias, which argues that virtue in the soul is analogous to health in the body: “It’s when a certain order (κÒσµος), the proper one for each thing, comes to be present in it that it makes each of the things there are, good” (506e2-4).7 Similarly, in the Republic the just person has established order (κοσµÆσαντα) within himself and harmonizes (συναρµÒσαντα) the parts of his soul (Rep. IV.443d4-5). The Republic explains how this order comes about in terms of structural similarities between body and soul. “To produce health is to establish the components of the body in a natural (κατὰ φÊσιν) relation of control (κρατε›ν) and being controlled, one by another, according to nature, while to produce disease is 51
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to establish a relation of ruling (ἄρχειν ) and being ruled contrary to nature (παρὰ φÊσιν)” (444d3-6). By analogy, “[t]o produce justice is to establish the parts of the soul in a natural relation of control, one by another, while to produce injustice is to establish a relation of ruling and being ruled contrary to nature” (444d8-11).8 The analogy assumes that a just soul and a healthy body each exemplify a second principle: A thing exhibits proper order if, and only if, some part of it is the natural ruler over its other parts.9 The third basic principle is introduced in connection with Socrates’ theory that the soul has three parts—reason, spirit, and appetite. 10 He argues that the first of these parts is by nature the ruler over the other two on the basis of two doctrines he has used earlier in Book I to argue that the just person is happy. The first is the functional account of goodness, which involves three claims: (1) The function of a thing is what it alone can do or what it does better than anything else (I.353a9-11). For example, the function of a knife is to cut. (2) “Anything that has a function performs it well by means of its own peculiar virtue and badly by means of its vice” (I.353c5-7). The virtue of a knife is a feature like sharpness that enables it to cut well. (3) A thing is good if it performs its function well and bad if it does so badly (cf. 353e4-5). A good knife is one that cuts well. 11 The functional theory of virtue and goodness is combined with the principle of the natural specialization: each part of a system should perform the function for which it is naturally suited (II.370a-c, 374b-c). In Book IV Socrates asks whether these premises can be applied to the rational part of the soul: “Isn’t it appropriate for the rational part (λογιστικ“) to rule, since it is really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul…?” (IV.441e4-5). He defines the virtues of moderation and justice in terms of the rule of reason. An individual is moderate “when the ruler and the ruled [within the soul] believe in common that the rational part (λογιστικÒν) should rule and don’t engage in civil war against it” (442c10-d1, cf. 431a). Similarly justice—in the abstract “doing one’s own” (443b)—is found in the soul when reason rules, because the rational part is naturally suited to rule, while the appetitive part is naturally suited to be ruled, and the spirited part is by nature the helper of the rational part (444b, 441a). Therefore, the rule of the rational part is according to nature (κατὰ φÊσιν), whereas the rule of the nonrational part is contrary to nature (πατὰ φÊσιν) (444d8-11). This is the gist of Plato’s third basic principle: The rational part is the natural ruler over the nonrational part. To sum up, Socrates in the Republic relies on three principles: 1. Principle of order: A thing is in a correct condition if, and only if, it exhibits proper order. 52
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2. Principle of rulership: A thing exhibits proper order if, and only if, some part of it is the natural ruler over its other parts. 3. Principle of rule of reason: The rational part is the natural ruler over the nonrational part. Socrates maintains that these principles apply to the city as well as to the soul (cf. IV.442d, 443b, 444a). The political application of the rule of reason, however, raises difficult questions. First, how is the rational part distinguished from the nonrational part? Socrates says that “each of us differs somewhat in nature from the others, one being suited to one function, another to another” (I.370a7-b1, cf. 370c). How is the rational part of the city distinguished from the nonrational part? If it is assumed that the rational part alone can possess the wisdom that confers political legitimacy, what sort of wisdom is this, and who has it? Second, what is the proper aim of the rational ruling part? If it is supposed that this aim is to be called “the common good” or “the public interest,” how should such expressions be interpreted? Third, in what manner is it appropriate for the rational part to rule over nonrational parts? If it is supposed that the rational part alone possesses the wisdom that confers political legitimacy, is it permissible for it to try to control the nonrational part by means other than rational persuasion, for example, by coercion, deception, and emotional manipulation? Fourth, what reason does the rational part have to rule over the nonrational, and to do so in a correct or just manner? Several of the problematic policies that Socrates proposes in the Republic touch on these thorny issues. 3. Socrates’ Paradoxical Policies Before considering Socrates’ political applications of the rule of reason in the Republic, we should briefly review the context in which they are proposed. In Republic Book I, Socrates criticizes several definitions of justice including Thrasymachus’s definition that justice is what is in the interest of the stronger, and he argues in conclusion that justice is more profitable than injustice. In Book II, however, Glaucon and Adeimantus challenge Socrates to show that justice is good for its own sake and not merely due to its consequences, that the benefits of justice cannot be derived from the mere reputation of justice, and that the deleterious consequences of injustice are unavoidable. Socrates must explain what justice and injustice are and show “what power each itself has when it’s by itself in the soul” (II.358b5-6). That is, he must demonstrate that the just person is invariably happier than the unjust person, even if they have the reputation and receive the punishments and rewards of their opposites (361c-d). 53
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To meet this challenge, Socrates compares the soul with the city. Although bigger and easier to study (II.368d), the city is “just” in the same sense as the soul. For if you call a thing by the same name, it will be the same in respect of the Form (ε‰δος) regardless of whether it is big or little (IV.435a5-b2). Socrates turns to the city, in order to find out what justice is in the soul and thereby answer the challenge to show that it pays to be just.12 He invites his interlocutors to join him in making a city in theory (λÒγος) from its beginning (II.369c9). The first city is governed by the principle of natural specialization: “everyone must practice one of the occupations in the city for which he is naturally best suited” (IV.433a5-6, cf. II.370c3-5, 374b6-c2). This anticipates the later definition of justice as “the having and doing of one’s own” (IV.433e12-434a1). The initial city arises out of mutual need, and the members perform the work for which they are best suited: farming, building, weaving, cobbling, trading, etc. They fulfill their subsistence needs, and “they enjoy sex with one another but bear no more children than their resources allow, lest they fall into either poverty or war” (II.372b8-c1). Glaucon objects that the city offers no luxuries and is “a city of pigs” (372d4). Socrates agrees to consider the luxurious city which is “feverish” in contrast to the primitive city which is “healthy.” The pursuit of luxury goods leads to war. Accordingly, the principle of natural specialization requires that there be a specialized class of guardians to protect the city (372d-374e). The transition from the “city of pigs” is somewhat puzzling because Socrates calls it “the true city” despite its lack of a qualified rulers. He seems to agree with Adeimantus that the justice of this city is found in some need that the citizens have of each other, although he also remarks that by examining the luxurious city we may see “how justice and injustice grow up in cities.” His point however may be that the first city is healthy because all the citizens have self-regulated desires (see 372b-c, cited above). This assumption is abandoned in Glaucon’s luxurious city, leading to “the endless acquisition of money,” and, in turn, to strife within and between cities (see 373e). Because the producers cannot control their own desires, their city can be restored to health only if they have guardians to protect them from themselves and from foreign enemies who are likewise uncontrolled. This leads to the first of Socrates’ policies based on the rule of reason: Policy 1 There must be a class of rational rulers separate from the other citizens. Socrates remarks that the city’s rulers must be not only spirited and strong but also in a sense “philosophical” (literally, lovers of 54
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wisdom). “Philosophy, spirit, speed, and strength must all, then, be combined in the nature of anyone who is to be a fine and good guardian of our city” (II.376c4-5). This leads to an extended discussion of the education of the guardians. Later (III.412c-413c) Socrates distinguishes a special subclass of guardians who are best at ruling the city. These men are guardians also of the conviction that they must eagerly purse what is advantageous to the city and be wholly unwilling to do the opposite. Neither compulsion nor magic spells will get them to discard or forget their belief that they must do what is best for the city. “We must find out who are the best guardians of their conviction that they must always do what they believe to be the best for the city” (III.413c5-7). These are the “complete guardians,” and their younger colleagues “we’ll now call auxiliaries and supporters of the guardians’ convictions” (414b1-6). Socrates’ city thus consists of three classes: guardians, auxiliaries, and producers. The citizens are persuaded to support this arrangement by means of the myth of the metals, the aim of which is to make the citizens “care more for the city and for each other” (415d3-4). The grain of truth in this “noble falsehood” is that the rulers must be naturally capable of carrying out the task: “the god who made you [citizens] mixed some gold [i.e., reason] into those who are adequately equipped to rule,” but anyone without gold in his soul “must have a rank appropriate to his nature” (415a4-5, c1-2).13 The implication of the foregoing characterization of the guardians is that they possess knowledge of the public good. This soon is soon made explicit. The guardians are citizens who possess the knowledge (§πιστƵη) which deliberates “not about any particular matter but about the city as a whole and the maintenance of good relations both internally and with other cities” (IV.428c11-d3). Socrates claims that the ruling part will consist of a minority of wise citizens: “A whole city established according to nature would be wise because of the smallest class and part in it, namely, the governing or ruling one. And to this class which seems to me by nature the smallest, belongs a share of the knowledge (§πιστƵης) that alone among all the other kinds of knowledge is to be called wisdom (σοφαν)” (428e7429a3). The innate capacity for knowledge must be carefully nurtured; hence Socrates’ emphasis on the education of the guardians. Eventually in the analogy between the city and the soul, it becomes clear that the guardians’ authority is based on the rule of reason: “Isn’t it appropriate for the rational part (λογιστικÒν) to rule, since it is really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul?” (441e4-5). The four cardinal virtues are explained in terms of this principle. An individual is courageous when “the spirited part … preserves through pains and pressures the declarations of reason (ÍπÚ τ«ν λÒγων) about 55
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what is to be feared and what isn’t” (442c1-3). An individual is called wise “because of that small part of himself [i.e., the rational part] that rules in him and makes those declarations and has within it the knowledge (§πιστƵην) of what is advantageous for each part and for the whole soul, which is the community of all three parts” (442c5-8). An individual is moderate “when the ruler and the ruled [within the soul] believe in common that the rational part (λογιστικÒν) should rule and don’t engage in civil war against it” (442c10-d1). Finally, an individual is just when each part of the soul performs its own function (443b1-2). The rational part is naturally suited to rule, while the appetitive part is naturally suited to be ruled, and the spirited part is by nature the helper of the rational part (444b1-5, cf. 441a2-3). 14 Thus the rule of reason applies to the soul, and this explains why it applies to the city. The political implications of the rule of reason become quite clear with the paradoxical proposal that some women must be chosen along with men to share in their guardianship (V.456ab). Socrates argues as follows: In assigning citizens to jobs we must focus on the form and sameness and difference that is relevant to their ways of life (454c). Some women have philosophical natures, while some have spirited natures, and others appetitive natures (cf. 455d-456a). “So one woman may have a guardian nature and another not, for wasn’t it qualities of this sort that we looked for in the natures of the men we selected as guardians?” (456a7-8). This argument is an enthymeme. The tacit premiss is clearly the rule of reason: the citizens who comprise the rational part of the city are by nature guardians over the citizens who comprise its nonrational part. Therefore, insofar as some women naturally belong to the rational part, they should be admitted to the guardian class.15 Socrates has already (e.g., at II.376b-c and V. 456a) laid the ground for his avowedly most paradoxical policy: “Until political power and philosophy entirely coincide,… cities will have no rest from evils” (V.473d3-5). Policy 2 The rulers must be philosophers. The rule of the philosopher in the city corresponds to the rule of the rational part of the soul over the spirited and appetitive parts. Each part of the soul has its distinctive pleasure, desire, and type of rule (IX.580d-581b). The appetitive part has desires for food, drink, sex and the like, although it is called the money-loving or profit-loving part because its appetites are most easily satisfied by using cash. The spirited part yearns after control, victory, and good reputation and is called the victory-loving and honor-loving part. Finally, the rational part is “always wholly straining to know where the 56
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truth lies” and is called learning-loving or wisdom-loving. The wisdom-lover (φιλÒσοφος), that is, the philosopher, has a soul which is ruled by the part of the soul that learns, that is, the rational part (582e8-583a3). That is, as noted by Norman O. Dahl, “the objects of the desires of the rational part of the soul dominate” this person’s conception of the good. 16 Because philosophers are devoted to knowing the truth, they are also uniquely suited to rule the city. The policy of rule by philosophers rests on the idea that rulers are craftsmen who require philosophical knowledge. A ruler without knowledge of the Forms is like a painter without sight. Rulers who lack the knowledge of each thing that is “have no clear model (παράδειγµα) in their souls, and so they cannot —in the manner of painters—look to what is most true, make constant reference to it, and study it as exactly as possible. Hence they cannot establish here on earth conventions about what is fine or just or good, when they need to be established, or guard and preserve them, once they have been established” (VI.484c7-d3). The philosopher is also compared to a ship captain who must know the art of navigation: “a true captain must pay attention to the seasons of the year, the sky, the stars, the winds, and all that pertains to his craft, if he’s really to be the ruler of a ship.” Sailors who denigrate the genuine navigator as a mere “stargazer” are misguided like citizens who regard philosophy as useless in politics (487e-489d).17 After studying the Forms the philosophical lawgiver will be guided by “the account (λÒγος) of the constitution,” and the rulers who follow him must be guided by this same account (497c-d, cf. 412a-b).18 The Forms possess an intrinsic order and by studying them the philosopher can establish order in his own soul: “As he looks at and studies things that are organized (τεταγµ°να) and always the same, that neither do injustice to one another or suffer it, being all in a rational order (κÒσµƒ … κατὰ λÒγον), he imitates them and tries to become as like them as he can…. Then the philosopher, by consorting with what is ordered and divine and despite all the slanders around that say otherwise, himself becomes as divine and ordered (κÒσµιος) as a human being can” (VI.500c2-d1, cf. IX.591e). The true ruler must be able to mark off in account (λÒγος) the Form of the Good, separating it from all other things; without this one can know neither the good itself nor any other good (VI.534b8-c5). The philosopher alone is able to grasp the Form of the Good, which provides reason with its ultimate norm. As rational agents, philosophers should use the Form of the Good as a guide not only to order their own souls, but, if they are rulers, to order their cities (see VI.500e-501c, VII.519e520a). Their aim broadly conceived is “to see that the city as a whole has the greatest happiness” (IV.421b5, cf. 428d and V.466a). He invokes this principle to justify his proposed 57
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communistic arrangement for the ruling class: including communal property, shared spouses and children, and common meals (III.416d-417b, V.457-466a). Policy 3 The ruler’s aim is the greatest happiness of the whole city. What exactly “the greatest happiness of the whole city” amounts to is very controversial. Unsympathetic modern writers such as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper characterize Plato as a statist comparable to modern fascists, Nazis, and Bolsheviks. 19 C. C. W. Taylor helps to clarify this issue by pointing out three essential characteristics of a totalitarian regime: It is authoritarian, in the sense that the ordinary citizen has no share, direct or indirect, in making decisions; it has an ideology, understood as “a pervasive scheme of values, intentionally promulgated by some person or persons and promoted by institutional means in order to direct all or the most significant aspects of public and private life towards the attainment of goals dictated by those values”; and the locus of political power directs the ideology. 20 It is hard to deny that Socrates’ ideal city is “totalitarian” in the broad sense defined by Taylor. But what specific kind of totalitarianism does Socrates advocate?21 Taylor helps here also by distinguishing different types of totalitarianism: extreme statism (in which individual interests are abrogated in favor of the good of the state), political organicism (in which individual interests are identified with their contribution to the interests of the state), and paternalism (in which individuals are compelled by government to promote their own interests). Plato’s text does not support the first interpretation, but commentators have defended the other two readings.22 Karl Popper adopts the second interpretation, according to which the city is a “super-individual” or “a kind of superorganism.” 23 Some texts support this interpretation when they compare legislating for the city and painting a statue: “You mustn’t expect us to paint the eyes so beautifully that they no longer appear to be eyes at all, and the same with other parts. Rather you must look to see whether by dealing with each part appropriately, we are making the whole statue beautiful” (IV.420d1-5). Similarly the legislator should be concerned with making the whole city happy. “In this way, with the whole city developing and being governed well, we must leave (§ατ°ον) it to nature to provide each group with its share of happiness” (421c3-6). This suggests that individual happiness should be left to nature rather than provided for through legislation.24 Aristotle criticizes the Republic for extreme organicism and many commentators have followed his lead. Socrates’ language 58
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supports this interpretation: “For example, when one of us hurts his finger, the entire organism that binds body and soul together into a single system under the ruling part within it is aware of this, and the whole feels the pain together with the part that suffers.… The city with the best government is most like such a person” (V.462c10-d2, 6-7). Raphael Demos also offers an organicist interpretation: What Socrates, in effect, is saying is that the perfection of the whole requires the subordination of the parts; and that the subordination of the parts contributes to the perfection of the whole. Going further he asserts that the parts would not be proper parts if they achieved a perfection independently of their place in the whole. For the parts are defined by their function in the whole….25
Aristotle reads the Republic this way, and objects that Socrates’ “hypothesis that it is best for the entire city to be one as far as possible” implies that the city should be, to the greatest extent possible, one in the same way as an organism: “if it becomes more one it will become a household instead of a city, and a human being instead of a household.” Aristotle dismisses this aim as misguided: “even if one could do this, it ought not to be done; for it would destroy the city” (Pol. II.2.1261a15-22). On Aristotle’s reading, Socrates calls for the rulers to aim at a total unity of the city that would obliterate individual differences through communism of property, children, and spouses (see Rep. V.462a-464b). Other passages of the Republic, however, support a paternalist interpretation. For example, “We take ourselves, then, to be fashioning the happy city, not picking out a few happy people and putting them in it, but making the whole city happy” (IV.420c1-4; this precedes the statue painting analogy). “[O]ur concern at the time was to make our guardians true guardians and the city the happiest we could, rather than looking to any one group (¶θνος) within it and molding it for happiness” (V.466a2-6). On this interpretation the aim of the guardians should be to promote the interests of the whole community rather than sectional interests; it should not be (as Aristotle interpreted) to promote the happiness of the city as an abstract entity at the expense of its individual members. Again, “it isn’t the law’s concern to make any one class in the city outstandingly happy but to contrive to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing the citizens into harmony with each other … by making them share with each other (ἀλλÆλοις) the benefits that each class can confer on the community” (VII.519e1-520a1).26 As Julia Annas argues, Plato does undeniably subordinate individual interests to the common good; but this is not an entity over and above the
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Fred D. Miller, Jr. varying kinds of goodness of the varying kinds of people. The state is nothing over and above the people making it up, or rather it is the context in which different kinds of people can attain the excellence appropriate to them. Similarly the city’s happiness is just the happiness of all the citizens.27
Read this way Plato anticipates John Rawls’s view of society as “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.”28 Although each of these interpretations—organicism and paternalism—has textual support, neither is free of difficulty. A worry regarding organicism is that it foists onto Plato an implausible and perhaps absurd conception of the greatest happiness. Such an interpretation seems to leave the Republic vulnerable to an objection of the sort raised by Aristotle. But it is impossible for a whole to be happy unless most or all or some of its parts possess happiness. For being happy is not the same as being even; for the latter can belong to the whole even if neither of its parts does, but being happy cannot. But if the guardians are not happy, what other persons are? For at any rate the artisans and the multitude of vulgar persons are surely not. (Pol. II.5.1264b15-24)
On Aristotle’s interpretation, Socrates’ guardians are to aim at the happiness of the city considered as a whole without regard to whether any individual citizens are happy considered as individuals. Of course, according to organicism individuals are happy, albeit in a derived sense: individuals are happy insofar as they contribute to the happiness of the city as a whole. But Aristotle would reject this as preposterous (in the sense of getting things backwards): the city as a whole is happy because its citizens are happy, not vice versa. 29 A proponent of organicism might reply that it depends on what is meant by a ‘happy’ city. It is worth noting that Aristotle’s objection that a city cannot be εÈδαµων unless its members are seems especially telling if εÈδαµων is translated as ‘happy’, because ‘happy’ suggests an experiential component which a city could not have on its own. But if εÈδαµων is translated as ‘flourishing’, the holistic reading does not sound so absurd. For a city as a whole might plausibly be called ‘flourishing’ insofar as it possesses internal harmony or orderliness. Further, the Form of the Good provides philosophers with a pattern by which they can bring order to things in the perceptible world, including cities. According to John Cooper’s suggestion, it is “a complex, ordered whole, whose orderliness is due to the mathematical relationships holding among its parts.”30 The philosopher “recognizes a single criterion of choice: What, given the circumstances, will be most likely to maximize the total amount of rational order in the world as a whole?” 31 60
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How far the philosopher can succeed depends on circumstances. At the very least he should establish rational order in his own soul insofar as possible (cf. IX.592b), and as a teacher he should try to help others do the same (VI. 500b-d, cf. IX.592b). But, if the opportunity presents itself, they should try to establish a rational order in the city as a whole. A rationally ordered city— that is, a city ruled by its rational part—will be in a flourishing and optimal condition, and a city as a whole might be rationally ordered to the greatest extent, even though its citizens are not rationally ordered to the greatest extent with respect to their individual souls. 32 Although this interpretation is supported by the statue painting analogy, it is unclear whether it convincingly accounts for the claim that wisdom involves “knowledge of what is advantageous for each part and for the whole” (IV.442c6-8) or that the law’s aim is to make the citizens “share with each other the benefits that each class can confer on the community” (VII.519e3-520a3). The paternalist interpretation faces a different sort of problem. If the guardians must aim at the happiness of individual citizens, it must be possible for citizens of all stripes to be happy. But, as Aristotle, points out, the producers are surely not happy (see Pol. II.5.1264b23-4, quoted above). Socrates argues that individuals are happy only if they are just, and, on his definition, an individual soul is just only if its rational part rules over its nonrational parts. But if the producers are ruled by their appetites rather than by reason, they could not possess the sort of psychic harmony which would make them happy as individuals. 33 Along similar lines, Cooper argues that it would be “extraordinary” for Plato to hold that “a city can be just only if its citizens are just” because “Plato consistently restricts justice, as a virtue of individuals, to those who possess within themselves knowledge of what it is best to do and be.” 34 The producers of the just city can be neither just nor happy, if knowledge of the Form of the Good is necessary for justice and happiness. A proponent of paternalism might try to overcome this difficulty by offering a broader account of what it is to be ruled by reason. The basic idea is that one may be ruled by reason either directly or indirectly—directly, when one is guided by the knowledge of the Form of the Good in one’s own soul, or indirectly, when one is guided by the knowledge of the Form of the Good in another person’s soul. For example, in the soul of the manual worker the best part (i.e., reason) is naturally weak and unable to rule the beasts (i.e., desires) within. Therefore, to insure that someone like that is ruled by something similar to what rules the best person, we say that he ought to be the slave of that best person who has a divine ruler within himself. It isn’t to harm the slave that we say he must be ruled,
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Fred D. Miller, Jr. which is what Thrasymachus thought to be true of all subjects, but because it is better for everyone to be ruled by divine reason, preferably within himself and his own, otherwise imposed from without, so that as far as possible all will be alike and friends, governed by the same thing. (IX.590c8-d6)
On this view the producers are ruled for their own good and are in what Gregory Vlastos characterizes a condition of “idealized slavery.” 35 Socrates offers some basis for this interpretation, for example when he speaks of the most important aspects of the moderation of the masses as being “to obey the rulers and to rule the pleasures of drink, sex, and food for themselves” (III.389d9-e2). This implies that the producers can “internalize” to some extent the guidance that they receive from the philosopher rulers and thus attain a kind of (a lower grade to be sure) of psychic harmony. Socrates also refers to the “political courage” of the auxiliaries, which is “the preservation of the belief that has been inculcated by law through education about what things and sorts of things are to be feared” (IV.429c7-8). Again, the myth of Er describes a soul which had “lived his previous life under an orderly constitution, where he had participated in virtue through habit and without philosophy” (X.619c6-d1). On the basis of these passages, it might be argued that nonphilosophers are not entirely bereft of virtue and happiness, although what they enjoy is only an approximation of the virtue and happiness attained by philosophers. Taylor defends the paternalist interpretation along these lines: The goal of the polis is the production of as much individual eudaimonia as possible. But the majority of people are not capable of eudaimonia on their own; since they are incapable of grasping the Good, they cannot provide for themselves that impetus towards it which is a necessary condition for psychic harmony…. The nearest they can get to eudaimonia is to submit to the direction by the intellect of someone else.36
The seemingly intractable issue concerning the aim of the guardians seems to be related to certain ambivalence regarding the lower classes, especially the producers. As Bernard Williams remarks, There have been those who thought that the working classes were naturally of powerful and disorderly desires, and had to be kept in their place. There have been those who thought that they were good-hearted and loyal fellows of no great gifts who could recognize their natural superiors and, unless stirred up, keep themselves in their place. There can have been few who thought both; Plato in the Republic comes close to being such a one, even though we can recognize that his heart, and his fears, lie with
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The second story tends to support the paternalistic interpretation: the lower classes can attain virtue and happiness which approximates, but falls short of, that of the philosopher rulers; while the first story supports the organicist interpretation: the lower classes are really incapable of virtue and must be kept on a tight leash by the guardians. If it is correct that Plato’s Republic combines both stories, it is not surprising that opposed interpretations appeal to different commentators. In order to achieve the common good, however it is understood, the guardians must maintain control over the other citizens. According to Socrates a soul is moderate or selfcontrolled when “the naturally better part is in control of the worse,” that is, reason is in control of spirit and appetite. Analogously in a moderate city “the desires of the inferior many are controlled by the wisdom and desires of the superior few” (IV.431c9-d2). This condition requires political unanimity or consensus (ıµÒνοια), that is, the ruler and subjects must share the same belief about who should rule (431e10-432a9). We might expect rational rulers to guide their subjects by means of reasoned arguments. Yet Socrates’ city is replete with compulsory policies. In addition to using coercion if necessary against their fellow citizens (III.415e, V.465a-b), the guardians must enforce moral conformity by means of censorship and banishment against poets and subversive craftsmen (II.377b-c; III.398a, 401b). Socrates observes, that “our rulers will have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit of those they rule” (V.459c8-d1; cf II.382c, III.414b). On the other hand, he is clearly not advocating a brutal dictatorship, since he sees it as “the law’s concern to contrive to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing the citizens into harmony with each other through both persuasion and compulsion” (VII.519e1-4).38 Policy 4 Rational rulers should control their subjects through both persuasion and compulsion. When it is necessary, they may employ deception, manipulation, propaganda, censorship, and coercion to secure obedience. Rational persuasion is presumably the norm among the guardians themselves because they are trained to be philosophers and, having a “philosophical nature,” will “inevitably grow to possess every virtue,” if they are properly educated (VI.492a1-3). But it is permissible for even the guardians to be deceived on some occasions. It is acceptable to try to use the 63
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aforementioned myth of the metals, a “noble falsehood,” to persuade even the guardians, who have just been distinguished from the auxiliaries, although Socrates concedes the attempt will probably not succeed (III.414b-c, 415c-d). And a small coterie of “rulers” may deceive the other guardians with a bogus marriage lottery in order to maintain “the purity of the herd” (V.459d-e).39 Compulsion will be practiced far more extensively upon the lower classes according to Socrates’ relentless logic: If the rulers must promote the common good and they issue commands based on their knowledge of the good but the subjects are often unable or unwilling to understand the reasons for these commands, then the rulers are justified in the frequent use of means other than reasoned argument to secure obedience. Is Socrates’ authoritarianism tempered in any way? This depends on the extent to which the lower classes are amenable to persuasion. Here again, Plato’s text is open to different interpretations. On an ultra-authoritarian interpretation, the lower classes, especially the producers, are impervious to rational argument. In Popper’s terms, they are “human cattle, whose sole function is to provide for the material needs of the ruling class.” 40 But this interpretation seems inconsistent with indications that the producer has a rational faculty although it is dominated by appetites (see VIII.553d). On a less authoritarian interpretation, the lower classes are open to persuasion because the nonrational parts of their souls can be controlled by true beliefs so that they are capable of virtue to some extent. 41 Socrates mentions the agreement in belief (ıµοδοξα) between the rulers and subjects and to the lawful belief (δÒξα ¶ννοµος) of the auxiliaries (IV.433c6-8). In the case of the auxiliaries at any rate the beliefs are produced by education (429c7) so that they are relatively stable and thus ensure a degree of psychic harmony. Similarly, the producers will be amenable to some kind of persuasion.42 Yet the subjects remain in a condition of “idealized slavery” because they are completely dependent on the philosopher rulers for their correct beliefs. 43 This interpretation arguably leads to a puzzle: if the subjects are rational to the extent of forming correct beliefs and reasoning, why aren’t they capable of self-government? As Taylor states, “the intellect of the producers is both sufficiently developed to have genuine control over their lives, and therefore to ensure psychic harmony, and so weak as to require them to be enslaved to the guardians for their own good.” 44 This interpretation would be more plausible if it were shown how the subjects could walk such a fine line.45 In any case this interpretation allows for considerable compulsion and deception of the subjects, though less so than the former interpretation. The proposal that philosophers should rule the city leads to another problem: What reason do philosophers have to shoulder 64
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this burden? Socrates regards their reluctance to rule as an endearing trait of philosophers (VII.520d). The philosopher is like a lover consumed by sexual desire: “he neither loses nor lessens his erotic love until he grasps the being of each nature itself with the part of his soul that is fitted to grasp it, because of its kinship with it, and, once getting near what really is and having intercourse with it and having begotten understanding and truth, he knows, truly lives, is nourished, and—at that point, but not before—is relieved from the pains of giving birth” (VI.490b1-7). After beholding the Form of the Good, the philosopher regards himself as happy and nonphilosophers as wretched so that he would rather “go through any sufferings, rather than share their opinions and live as they do” (VII.516d6-7, cf. 518ab). But only philosophers are qualified to rule, because their unenlightened fellow citizens “don’t have a single goal at which all their actions, public and private, inevitably aim” (519c2-3). Socrates concludes that the legislators must not permit the philosophers to shirk their civic duty (520a, 521b). Policy 5 Rational rulers must be compelled to rule. The Republic repeatedly mentions that the philosophers must be compelled to rule. 46 Leo Strauss views this policy as a poison pill in Socrates’ ostensibly ideal city. “The philosophers cannot be persuaded, they can only be compelled to rule the cities.” Strauss infers that “the just city is not possible because of the philosopher’s unwillingness to rule.” But, as Myles Burnyeat objects, the text suggests that philosophers are to be compelled by means of rational argument. In fact, Socrates offers a speech which is to be used to persuade the philosophers (520a-d).47 Another difficulty lurking in this passage is, however, harder to evade. When Glaucon objects that it would be unjust to force the philosophers to live a worse life when they could live a better one, Socrates reminds him that “it isn’t the law’s concern to make any one class in the city outstandlingly happy but to contrive to spread happiness throughout the city” (519e1-3). Glaucon concedes, “That’s true, I had forgotten.” But Socrates neglects to remind Glaucon about something else: his original challenge to Socrates to demonstrate that the just person is better off, happier, and more blessed than the unjust person.48 But Socrates himself has not forgotten it. He will later claim that he has answered the challenge by proving that “justice itself is the best thing for the soul itself” (X.612b2-3). Socrates seems to have fallen into inconsistency. He makes two claims here: (1) If the philosophers are just, they will agree to rule the city. (2) The philosophers will be less happy if they rule the city rather than contemplate the Forms. But these conflict with the main thesis he has been defending since Book 65
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II: (3) The just life is invariably happier than the unjust life, regardless of considerations such as punishments, rewards, and reputation. Some interpreters try to avoid the problem by rejecting or qualifying claim (2). On this view, even though the philosopher rulers must forsake the happiness of contemplating the Forms while they are ruling, their lives are no less happy. After they grasp the Form of the Good they undergo a momentous personal transformation so that they experience happiness not only through contemplating the Forms but also in restructuring their communities in light of the Forms. 49 Richard Kraut, in defending this interpretation, concludes that the philosopher rulers really promote their own self-interest after all: “one’s highest good is not always served by purely contemplating the Forms; rather, one’s highest good is to establish and maintain a certain initiative relationship with the Forms, a relationship that is strained or ruptured when one fails to do one’s fair share in a just community.”50 This solution is not free of difficulty. Why do philosophers have to be compelled to rule if they know they are better off ruling? When Glaucon asks, “are we to do them an injustice by making them live a worse life when they could live a better one?” Socrates concedes that they would live a worse life by carrying out their duty, so that they must be compelled. 51 The reason is evidently that he regards pure contemplative activity as better than political activity. Even if the philosophers derive some satisfaction from meeting their just obligations, they would be more satisfied overall if they were off contemplating the Forms. Kraut accepts this, but remarks that “this does not entail that pure contemplation that creates injustice is more advantageous than political activity that is justly required.” 52 However, if pure contemplation involving injustice is not “more advantageous” than political activity involving justice, then the philosopher rulers make no personal sacrifice in doing their duty, and it is misleading to suggest otherwise. Moreover, if Socrates has no independent argument as to why it is not more advantageous to shirk one duty’s than not, he seems to be begging the question. Other interpreters suggest the more radical solution of rejecting (3) the claim that the just person is always happier than the unjust. 53 On this approach philosophers agree to rule because they have discovered upon grasping the Forms that they have a higher end than their own happiness. They have undergone a conversion which leads them to forsake their personal well-being. As Glenn Morrow remarks, “every soul … that has had any vision of the ideal is under an obligation to try to transform the sense-world into its likeness.” 54 According to Norman Dahl, “what motivates a person with a harmonious soul is an impartial desire to instantiate Justice.” 55 On John 66
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Cooper’s interpretation, the philosopher is concerned with maximizing the total amount of rational order in the world as a whole rather than with promoting his own self interest.56 Plato’s philosophers will settle for a less flourishing existence than they might have had (519e1-520a4; cf. 420b4-8, 465e4466a6). On the other hand,… a true philosopher never concerns himself with his own good. His ultimate end is to improve not just the small part of the world that is constituted by his own life, but the whole of it, this part taken together with the rest.57
This solution has an awkward result: The official argument of the Republic is exposed as a sham, or perhaps a noble lie. At the end of the dialogue, Socrates asks “And haven’t we found that justice itself is the best thing for the soul itself, and that the soul—whether it has the ring of Gyges or even it together with the cap of Hades—should do just things?” (X.612b2-5), when he knows full well that he has proven nothing of the sort. His ostensible thesis—that the just soul is happier than the unjust—is like a Trojan horse because the philosopher ultimately learns that, even if it is not in his interest to be just, this doesn’t matter because he has a higher duty to maximize the good-itself in the world.58 In conclusion, it is difficult to explain why the philosophers would choose to be rulers, based on the text of the Republic.59 4. The Rule of Reason without Paradoxical Policies Socrates contends that “our city, if indeed it has been correctly founded, is completely good” (IV.427e6-8). The rule of reason is the theoretical bedrock for the Republic on which Socrates has founded his Kallipolis, “the beautiful city” (VII.527c2). However, Socrates prescribes some troubling policies for his just city, involving elitism (a segregated class of philosopher rulers), collectivism (the aim being “the greatest happiness of the whole city”), authoritarianism (extensive use of deception, manipulation, propaganda, surveillance, censorship, and coercion), and alienated rulers (who consent to rule only from a sense of duty). These not only conflict with common beliefs about political justice, but in some cases they seem to generate apparent inconsistencies within Socrates’ overarching argument that the just life is the happy life. This prompts the question: To what extent is the rule of reason responsible for the totalitarianism of the Republic? Is the rule of reason an inherently authoritarian and antidemocratic doctrine? Let us review Socrates’ policies with these questions in mind. Policy 1 There must be a class of rational rulers separate from the other citizens. 67
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Socrates’ proposal for a separate class of guardians depends in part on tendentious claims about the psychology of the different classes that make up the city. Socrates apparently assumes that the natural ruling class differs from the natural subject classes with respect to both rational capacity and motivational structure. As Williams remarks: Criticism of Plato often concentrates on his opinion that ruling is a matter of expertise; but he needs more than that opinion to reach his results in the Republic, and has to combine with it a set of views about what characteristics generally co-exist at the level of individual psychology. In that area, he has to believe not only that λογιστικÒν comes in two sizes (as we might say, regular size and king size), but also that the talents and temperaments that make good soldiers go with thymoeidic motivations, and the talents and temperaments that make good workers go with epithymetic motivations.60
Although details of Williams’s critique might be called into question, 61 he seems right that Socrates’ elitism depends in large part on the assumption that most citizens are psychologically unfit for rule. Aside from this controversial psychological theory, Socrates’ inference to a separate ruling class seems questionable in a more general way. The rule of reason presupposes that a community such as the city consists of two parts: the rational and the nonrational. Socrates gives an argument for this presupposition in Republic Book IV based on the hypothesis of opposites: that a thing cannot act or be affected in opposite ways in relation to the same object, at the same time, in the same respect, and so forth. But even if it is granted that the city, like the soul, has rational and nonrational parts and that the former should rule over the latter, this does not establish the need for a separate ruling class, for a thing may be said to have “parts” in different senses. These parts may be separable from each other and from the whole to which they belong, for example, the wheels of a wagon. Or the parts may be aspects or features of a whole and not separable except in thought, for example, the concave and convex surfaces of a lens, or the axis and circumference of a spinning top. The latter is of course Socrates’ own example (Rep. IV.436d-e). 62 Hence, even if it is granted that the city, like the soul, has distinct rational and nonrational parts, it does not follow that these must exist separately from each other. Thus it is not necessary that the rational part and the nonrational part be separate classes of citizens, for it might turn out that the rational and nonrational parts are found in each of the citizens individually, or that they are aspects of the citizenry as a whole. The rule of reason is compatible with any of these possibilities. 68
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Policy 2 The rulers must be philosophers. The rule of reason implies that those who participate in the political process should exhibit rationality. But Socrates assumes a very peculiar understanding of political rationality when he advocates philosopher rulers. According to Socrates the Form of the Good serves as a model for the rulers: “Once they’ve seen the good itself, they must each in turn put the city, its citizens, and themselves in order, using it as their model (παραδεγµατι)” (VII.540a8-9). Another passage describes the model as a sort of utopia. [Glaucon] You mean that he [i.e., the philosopher] will be willing to take part in the politics of the city we were founding and describing, the one that exists in theory (§ν λÒγοις), for I don’t think it exists anywhere on earth. [Socrates] But perhaps, I said, there is a model (παράδειγµα) of it in heaven, for anyone who wants to look at it and make himself its citizen on the strength of what he sees. It makes no difference whether it is or will be somewhere, for he would take part in the practical affairs of that city and no other. (IX.592a10b5)
It sounds as though Socrates’ model is a real city in heaven populated by ideal citizens, of which the human city is but a faint imitation. It would be a literal utopia, having “no place” in the perceptible world, although it might provide guidance for real-world legislators. This suggests the sort of “hyperrealism” found in neo-Platonic accounts which treat the Forms as higher realities of which perceptible particulars are perceptible particulars. The Form is an intelligible model analogous to the perceptible human model used by a craftsman to create a product. Just as the picture of a bed made by a painter is an imitation of the perceptible bed made by a carpenter, the perceptible bed is an imitation of the Form of a Bed made by a god. On the hyperrealist view, crudely stated, the Form of a Bed is not only made by a god, but it is a bed a god could sleep in (see X.597b).63 On an alternative the model is more like a recipe or design according to which the product is made. 64 Such a recipe might describe a mathematical structure shared by particular instances. 65 The latter interpretation yields a more plausible view of the Forms, although it requires us to take Socrates’ comment about making oneself a citizen of the model city as a metaphor for making one’s own soul virtuous.66 But even the less extravagant interpretation goes well beyond the rule of reason in assuming that political expertise requires philosophical knowledge of the Form of the Good. This assumption is criticized by Aristotle. 69
Fred D. Miller, Jr. The idea has a certain plausibility, but seems not to be in accord with what we find with the various sorts of expert knowledge; for all of them seek some particular good, and though they look for whatever is lacking, they leave out knowledge of the form of the good. And yet it is hardly likely that all the experts should be unaware of so great a resource, and should fail even to go looking for it. But it is also difficult to see how a weaver or a carpenter will be helped in relation to his craft by knowing this good “itself ”; or how someone who has seem the form itself will be a better doctor or a better general. (EN I.6.1096b31-1097a11, trans. Rowe)
Aristotle’s objection is that knowledge of the Form of the Good can provide no practical guidance in ethics or politics. 67 Aristotle agrees with the need for political expertise, but he argues that political wisdom is a species of practical wisdom (φρÒνησις) which is expressed in good deliberation about the things that conduce to the good life, and not a species of theoretical wisdom (σοφα), which is expressed in scientific demonstrations (in physics, astronomy, optics, and other natural sciences) (VI.5.1140a25-7, 7.1141a16-20, 8.1141b23-4, cf. a20-b12). Although Aristotle endorses the rule of reason, he does not even discuss the claim that rulers must be philosophers. Policy 3 The ruler’s aim is the greatest happiness of the whole city. According to the rule of reason the rational element has the natural right to rule because it alone knows what is good for the whole of which it is a part (III.412e; IV.441e, 442c, 444d). This whole may be a soul, a city, or even the whole cosmos. However, as was noted above, “the good of the whole” and more specifically “the happiness of the whole city” can be understood in very different ways. Commentators disagree over whether Socrates understands the “happy city” as involving the mutual advantage of each social class or even of each and every citizen or as involving the collective well-being of the city, which may entail significant sacrifices on the part of various classes or individual citizens. It was suggested that the controversy is difficult to resolve due to the vagueness of crucial passages. But the very existence of such an interpretative dispute indicates that the rule of reason by itself does not require the wholesale collectivization proposed by Socrates in the Republic. Policy 4 Rational rulers should control their subjects through both persuasion and compulsion. When it is necessary, they may employ deception, manipulation, propaganda, censorship, and coercion to secure obedience. 70
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The rule of reason can provide a justification for the use of compulsion. For if reason reveals what is objectively good and an individual wants to do otherwise, the individual may be compelled to abide by reason. However, it may be possible to compel an individual through rational persuasion, as we saw earlier in the passage in which the philosopher rulers are compelled by means of argument to share in governance (VII.519a-521a).68 But if the individual is unable or unwilling to be persuaded rationally, other means may be justified, as when a parent tricks a child or a pet unwilling to take its medicine by concealing it in a tasty morsel. As we saw Socrates advocates extensive use of such measures especially with the producers whom he lumps together with children, women, and slaves due to their defective psychology (see IV.431b-c, X.590c-d). There is again no reason to suppose that the rule of reason as such licenses such authoritarianism. Indeed, insofar as each of the subjects is capable of rational deliberation the rule of reason requires instead that the rulers use rational persuasion to secure their compliance. And if practical wisdom is distinct from philosophical wisdom, as Aristotle argued above, the capacity for rational deliberation does not need to be limited to a philosophical elite. Policy 5 Rational rulers must be compelled to rule. In view of the preceding discussion it is tempting to try to slice through the Gordian knot and simply dispense with the philosopher rulers. It is not clear however that this would completely solve the problem Plato has unearthed. Granted that the rulers are individual agents with their own reason for acting, it seems inevitable that tensions will arise between the public good and the good of the rulers considered as individuals. Regardless of whether the rulers are lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, or lovers of pleasure, they must forego their own happiness as individuals to some extent if they are to be fully just rulers of the city. 69 The rule of reason needs a solution to this problem if it is to be a tenable political theory. Plato suggests different possible approaches in the Laws. The legislators should try to institute a system of moral education not to produce an elite class of absolute philosopher rulers, but a body of citizens each of whom has “a keen desire to become a perfect citizen who knows how to rule and be ruled as justice demands” (I.643e5-6). This would of course require a profound transformation of the motivations of ordinary citizens. Another approach (compatible with the first) is to make the law itself the ruler over the city. The Athenian Stranger says that reason (λÒγος) “strives to become law” (VIII.835e5). The “golden cord” which is the power of calculation (λογισµÒς) in the individual soul is called the common law in the city (I.644d71
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645a). The Athenian Stranger suggests that it cannot be an accident that the name of this divine and wonderful thing, law (νÒµος) is so suggestive of intelligence (νοËς) (XII.957c6-7, cf. IV.714a). Rather than hoping for purely disinterested rational agents, the legislator should design a constitution which embodies policies for rational cooperation including procedures to ensure that the aberrant tendencies of public officials are held in check. Echoing these arguments for the rule of law, Aristotle adds, “That is a better ruler which is free from passion than that in which it is innate. Whereas the law is passionless, passion must always sway the human soul” (III.15.1286a17-20). “Appetite is a wild beast, and spirit perverts the minds of rulers, even when they are the best of men. That is why the law is intelligence (νοËς) unaffected by desire” (16.1287a30-2). Although the rule of law is itself a controversial doctrine, it is no surprise that proponents of the rule of reason are drawn to it.70 5. Conclusion I have argued here that the rule of reason can be extricated from other, more controversial doctrines in the Republic, such as elitism, collectivism, and ubiquitous compulsion. But the rule of reason is so far only a skeletal doctrine. The principle that the rational part of the state should govern the nonrational part rests on the claim that the rational part alone is capable of knowing the common good, that is, what is good for the whole community. On the basis of this knowledge, it is possible to distinguish between just political systems and policies (those that promote the common good) from unjust ones. The task of political science should be to found or reform political systems and policies so that they are just or at any rate as just as possible. Further, insofar as the citizens are rational, they have a right (just claim) to participate in governance.71 Fleshing this out would require a number of questions which are answered in the Republic in a controversial way: Is there an objective good, and can it be known through a rational process? What sort of rational process would this be? Who is capable of carrying out such a process successfully? Further, in what sense is the common good “common”—is it good for each and everyone or good for the whole community in some other sense? Should political rule may be exercised directly by rational individuals issuing commands or indirectly through laws, customs, and intermediate institutions? Or does this depend on circumstances? If persuasive answers are forthcoming, the rule of reason may still be relevant to modern political philosophy. For example, it might be argued that democracy is the most defensible political system because it is best suited for making correct political decisions. Aristotle seriously considers this sort 72
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of “wisdom of the multitude” argument: “the many, each of whom is not excellent man, none the less by coming together can be better (not individually but collectively) than those…. For each individual among the many has a portion of virtue and practical wisdom, and when they come together the multitude becomes like one human being, having many feet, hands, and senses, so also regarding character and thought” (Pol. III.11.1281a42-b7). This type of argument is developed much more fully in John Stuart Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government and in the burgeoning contemporary literature on deliberative democracy. If an argument along these lines is sound, then the rule of reason may form the theoretical basis for a democratic constitution that ensures rational deliberation concerning public policy.72 In conclusion, the rule of reason is one of Plato’s ideas that modern political philosophers may still be able to defend. It is worth the effort.73 Notes 1
This in an important theme in early cosmology, e.g., Xenophanes: “There is one god, greatest among gods and men, similar to mortals in neither body nor thought (νÒηµα),” (B23) and “without effort with the thought of his mind (νÒου φρεν‹) he shakes everything” (B25). Anaxagoras: “he has knowledge (γν≈µγν) of all things and greatest power; and mind controls (νοËς κρατε›) all things that have soul …” (B12). Diogenes of Apollonia: “what has thought (νÒησιν) is that which men call air, and by this all things are governed (κυβερνᾶσθαι) and it controls (κρατε›ν) all things …” (B5). Aristotle made the rule of reason a fundamental principle in his own political science, e.g., “It is clear that it is natural and advantageous for the body to be ruled (ἄρχεσθαι) by the soul over the body, and the passionate part by the mind (ÍπÚ τοË νοË) and the part possessing reason (λÒγον)” (Pol. I.5.1254b6-9). 2 According to Rousseau, “the general will alone can direct the forces of the State according to the end of its institution, which is the common good” (Of the Social Contract II.1.1, trans. Gourevitch). Voluntarist theories take different forms: they may require that the rulers have the consent of the governed (either tacitly or expressly) or that the regime embodies the general will in a less definite way. Subjectivist variants of this approach appeal to interests, desires, subjective preferences, and so forth. It does not seem necessary to make the voluntarist/subjectivist alternative more precise for the purposes of this paper, which is narrowly concerned with the rationalist view found in the Republic. 3 The guardians are called craftsmen (δηµιουργÒι) (Rep. III.395b9c1, IV.421c2), and the legislator is compared to a statue painter (IV.420c). Compare Laws X.889d6-e1 where politics is called a craft (τ°χνη) and legislation is a matter of craft. Similarly, the Timaeus employs the craftsman analogy in its “likely story” about the origin of the empirical world, with an immaterial intelligent demiurge shaping preexisting matter into an orderly cosmos (30a, c, 37d, 53a-b, 69b-c). Many scholars have commented on the parallels between the cosmic demiurge and the human legislator, e.g., Morrow 1953-54, Laks 1990
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Fred D. Miller, Jr. and 2000, and Bobonich 2002. 4 Rousseau argues that the legislator is necessary as a guide because “by itself the people always wills the good, but by itself it does not always see it. The general will is always upright, but the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened … the public enlightenment results in the union of understanding and will in the social body, from this union results the smooth cooperation of the parts, and finally the greatest force of the whole. Hence arises the necessity of a Lawgiver” (Of the Social Contract II.6.10, trans. Gourevitch). Rousseau’s voluntarist view of legislation is the antithesis of Plato’s rationalist account. 5 Owing to space constraints this paper is confined to the Republic except for a few brief references to other dialogues which shed light on the Republic. I plan in a sequel to examine the rule of reason in Plato’s later dialogues. It should be noted, however, that the rule of reason is implied by Socrates’ claim in the Gorgias that he alone puts his hand to political expertise (πολιτικØ τ°χνη) and practices political things (521d6-8). The rule of reason becomes a cosmological principle in later dialogues which claim that mind (νοËς) regulates and directs the cosmos (Phil. 28d, cf. 30c; Polit. 272e, 273c-d; Tim. 30a, 37d, 53a, 69c; Laws XII.966e, 967b). As Broadie remarks, “Plato holds that this sense-perceptible universe of ours can also become intelligible to us humans because it was constructed according to a rational plan, and we are in a position to make reasonable assumptions about the content of that plan” (2004, 72). Similarly, Plato holds that political life becomes intelligible only if it is constructed according to a rational plan and we are in a position to make reasonable assumptions about the content of that plan. 6 Demos 1957 offers an overview of the paradoxes in Plato’s Republic and attempts to solve them. 7 Trans. Donald J. Zeyl in Cooper 1997. This principle is explicitly expounded in the Gorgias, where Socrates argues that “when a certain order (κÒσµος), the proper one for each thing, comes to be present in it that it makes each of the things there are good” (506e2-4). This order arises from organization (τάξις), correctness (ÙρθÒτης), and craftsmanship (τ°χνη). Socrates has earlier argued that the true craftsman, e.g., shipbuilder or housebuilder, imposes order on his subject matter and compels one thing to be suited for another and to fit to it until the entire object is put together in an organized and orderly way; likewise gym teachers and doctors give order or organization to the body (503e504a). Order results in health and strength of the body. Similarly an orderly soul is better than a disorderly soul, since it is lawful, moderate, and virtuous (506d-507a). Finally, Socrates argues that a man who has an orderly virtuous soul is happy whereas a man with a disorderly vicious soul is miserable (cf. 507c). He also suggests that this principle applies to the universe as a whole: “Partnership and friendship, orderliness, moderation, and justice hold heaven and earth, and gods and humans, and that is why they call this universe a world order (κÒσµος), and not an undisciplined world-disorder (ἀκοσµαν)” (507e6-508a4). Similarly, the Philebus connects the good with beauty, proportion (συµµετρα), and truth (65a1-2), which are exemplified by “an incorporeal order (κÒσµος) that rules beautifully over an ensouled body” (64b7). 8 All translations from the Republic are by G. M. A. Grube, revised
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Plato on the Rule of Reason by C. D. C. Reeve, in Cooper 1997 unless otherwise indicated. 9 This principle is also invoked in the Phaedo: “When the soul and the body are together, nature orders the one to be subject and to be ruled, and the other to rule and be master” (79e9-80a1, trans. G. M. A. Grube in Cooper 1997; cf. 94c-d). See also Rep. I.353d. 10 See Miller 1999 for critical analysis of the argument for the tripartite soul. 11 See Santas 2001 for an illuminating discussion of the functional theory of the good and its role in the Republic. 12 There is a great controversy over whether and to what extent Socrates’ argument succeeds. In a famous article Sachs (1963) argues that Socrates commits the fallacy of relevance: The challenge is to prove that it profits one to possess vulgar (i.e., conventional) justice, which is displayed for example in caring for one’s parents and in refraining from fraud, theft, murder, adultery, impiety, and so forth (see Rep. IV.442e-443a). Socrates argues that it benefits someone to have Platonic justice, i.e., a harmonious soul, which is analogous to health in the body (444d-445b). But, Sachs objects, the argument fails because Socrates does not show that Platonic justice is a necessary and sufficient condition for vulgar justice. Two valuable overviews and attempts to resolve the problem the problem are Dahl 1991 and Kraut 1992. This issue is relevant to the central theme of this paper insofar as it bears on the relation between the rule of reason and psychic harmony, especially in connection with the fifth Socratic policy discussed below. 13 It is interesting to contrast this myth with the democratic myth in the Menexenus, which argues that all the citizens are equal because they have a common mother: “equality of birth (!σογονα) in the natural order makes us seek equality of rights (!σονοµαν) in the legal” (239a2-3, trans. Paul Ryan in Cooper 1997). The myth of metals also contrasts with Protagoras’s myth, in which Zeus gives all cities a share in justice and political wisdom (Prot. 322d-323a). 14 Cooper points out that reason is assigned “a double job: to know the truth and to rule (ἄρχειν, 441e4, 442c5). For reason to rule here takes the form of its deciding on its own authority what is the best thing to do, issuing injunctions (442c6, ταËτα παρÆγγελλεν), and seeing to it that the required action is undertaken” (1984, 6; cf. 1977, 152). It should be noted, however, that the other parts also have secondary jobs: being ruled (appetite) or helping the ruler (spirit). 15 Scholars disagree over whether the argument implies “feminism” in the sense of some commitment to equal rights for women: Vlastos 1989 argues (qualifiedly) that it does, and Annas 1976 that it doesn’t. 16 Dahl 1991, 820. Dahl argues persuasively that the rule of reason does not consist in merely choosing in accordance with the agent’s “overall conception of the good.” 17 See Keyt 2005 for a critical discussion of the ship of state analogy, which presumes that rationality and virtue are confined to the rulers. As Keyt shows the steersman (κυβερνÆτης) “was captain, helmsman, and navigator all rolled into one.” He argues that the point of the analogy is that just as the steersman knows how to get the ship’s passengers to its true destination, the philosopher ruler knows how to get the citizens to the real good. 18 As noted earlier the human ruler is analogous to the divine intelligent craftsman (δηµιουργÒς) of the Timaeus who looks to an
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Fred D. Miller, Jr. unchangeable model (παράδειγµα) in fashioning the sense-perceptible cosmos (28a-29d). In order for the creation and creator to be as good as possible, the maker must have been guided by an eternal model, not one that has come to be (28c5-29a3). Broadie (2004, 76) points out an analogy with human producers who often take created perceptible objects as their model: “human makers are at their best and most godlike (cf. 90b6-c6) if and only if they look instead to the eternal paradigm of whatever it is they proposed to make.” A product modeled after a created product is apt to be inferior because the maker may reproduce characteristics of the model which are inessential or which were formerly necessary but are now inappropriate. Along similar lines Sellars 1959 compares the divine craftsman to the soul and statesman. 19 According to Popper (1966, 107), for Plato, “[t]he criterion of morality is the interest of the state,” and “the individual is nothing but a cog (sc. in the state machine)” and hence “ethics is nothing but the study of how to fit him into the whole” (108; cited by Taylor 1997, 35). Regarding Bolshevism, Russell comments, “Far closer than any historical parallel is the parallel of Plato’s Republic…. The Communist Party corresponds to the guardians; the soldiers have about the same status in both; there is in Russia an attempt to deal with family life more or less as Plato suggested” (1949, 28–9). 20 Taylor 1986, 4–5. 21 See Schofield 2000, 218–19 on this controversy. 22 See Taylor 1986, 6–8. Likewise, unabashed modern proponents of extreme statism are scarce, if only because it is a hard sell. One suspects that would-be extreme statists often package their ideology as political organicism. 23 Popper 1966, 76 and 79. 24 The word §ατ°ον (IV.421c4) means “must be let alone” or “given up.” 25 Demos 1957, 167. 26 Cited by Vlastos 1977, 28, who notes that Popper (1966, 80) omits “with each other” in his translation of 519e5-520a1. Compare Laws V.739d7 where the Athenian Stranger claims that in a city in which property is owned in common, the inhabitants will enjoy themselves (εÈφραινÒµενοι) (cited by Taylor 1986, 15). 27 Annas 1981, 179. 28 Rawls 1971, 4. Vlastos (1978) argues further that Plato’s conception of justice implies “rights of persons” although not the sort of equal human rights espoused by modern liberalism. 29 Taylor (1986, 20) raises a related criticism: “The concept of a eudaimôn polis seems … to contain a crucial ambiguity.” It can mean either a city where each citizen considered as an individual is εÈδαµων (individualistic reading) or a city which is εÈδαµων as a whole even though its citizens considered as individuals are not (holistic reading). Taylor regards the apparent incompatibility of these two readings as a central problem in making sense of the Republic. 30 Cooper 1977, 155. 31 Cooper 1977, 156. Other commentators offer similar interpretations, e.g., Kraut (1992) and Irwin (1977, 237). Cooper is more explicit in emphasizing the role of maximization. It is not clear what evidence there is for this interpretation in the Republic, although it might be suggested by Timaeus 30a1-2: the demiurge “wanted
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Plato on the Rule of Reason everything to be good and nothing to be bad so far as that was possible.” 32 Platonic justice on Cooper’s interpretation resembles modern utilitarianism, the view that the rightness of actions involves maximizing the good however it is distributed. Cohen (1977) raises some interesting problems for this interpretation. For example, even if it is granted that the just person should try to transform the perceptible world into a likeness of the rationally ordered Form, does this entail trying to maximize the total amount of rational order in the world (utilitarianism) or trying to bring about the most perfect instance of rational order (perfectionism)? Should the philosopher try to produce a small amount of nearly perfect order (e.g., in his own soul) or a greater amount of less perfect order (e.g., in the city)? 33 This problem is related to an objection raised by Bernard Williams (1973), who contends that Socrates’ argument relies on two principles: First, “A city is F if and only if its men are F” (cf. Rep. IV.435e), which Williams calls “the whole-part rule.” Second, “The explanation of a city’s being F is the same as that of a man’s being F (the same ε‰δος [Form] of F-ness applies to them both)” (cf. 435b1-2), which Williams calls “the analogy of meaning.” Williams objects that these two principles come into conflict when ‘just’ is substituted for ‘F’. On Plato’s theory of justice, a soul or city is just if, and only if, each of its parts does its job, and the job of the rational part is to rule over the two nonrational parts (i.e., the spirited and appetitive). Given the whole-part rule, the warriors and producers cannot governed by their rational part because, otherwise, they would belong to the rational part of the city. But if they are not governed by their rational part, the warriors and producers, considered as individuals, cannot be just, given the analogy of meaning. 34 Cooper 1977, 153 n. 7. Cooper notes the repeated references of knowledge at 428b6, c11, d8, e8, 429a1-3. Cf. Irwin 1995, 323-6; Bobonich 2002, 43. 35 Vlastos 1977, 28. Vlastos defends the paternalist interpretation. 36 Taylor 1986, 20–1. This interpretation of the passages is controversial. Other commentators (including Bobonich, Cooper, Irwin, and Kraut) contend that virtue requires philosophical knowledge in the Republic. Another passage (VII.518d9-e3) mentions “what are called the virtues of the soul” which are akin to those of the body because they are added later “by habit and practice” and contrasts them with the virtue of reasoning (φρον∞σαι). “What are called” translates καλοʵεναι, which is sometimes equivalent to “so-called,” and may suggest that habitual virtue is not really a virtue. 37 Williams 1973, 204. 38 The translation departs from Grube and Reeve, who render πειθο› κα‹ ἀναγκ˙ as “through persuasion or compulsion.” While not mistaken, “or” for κα‹ might misleadingly suggest that persuasion and compulsion are mutually exclusive. The present passage leaves it open whether the guardians can compel their subjects by persuading them. For further discussion of this passage, see below in connection with Policy 5 below. Compare IV.421c1: ἀναγκαστ°ον … κα‹ πειστ°Òν, quoted in n. 42 below. 39 Reeve (1988, 195–7) suggests that the philosopher rulers are an elite subclass “spawned” by the complete guardians. Presumably philosopher rulers would not need to lie to each other.
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Fred D. Miller, Jr. 40
Popper 1966, 47. See Vlastos 1973, sec 8. 42 This seems to be suggested by IV.421b7-c3: “We must compel and persuade the auxiliaries and guardians to follow our other policy and be the best possible craftsmen at their own work, and the same with all the others.” Here “all the others” (τοÁς ἄλλους ἄπαντας) clearly refers to the producer class. 43 Vlastos 1977, 20. 44 Taylor 1986, 28 n. 17. 45 Lear (1992) offers a solution to this problem, involving a complex psychological process of internalization and externalization whereby the souls of the citizens are adapted to the constitution. In brief, the philosopher rulers initially internalize the Form of the Good in their own souls and then externalize it by reshaping the souls of their subjects, who in turn internalize the appropriate cultural influences. Although the lower classes continue to be ruled by their nonrational desires, they are habituated to control these desires and to believe that it is better for them to share with the rulers the belief that philosophers should rule (III.389d-e; IV.431d-e, 433c-d). A problem for this interpretation is that Socrates makes no explicit provision for moral education of the producers, although he mentions education (παιδεα) in law of the auxiliaries (IV.429c). He also contrasts the education of the guardians with that of “cobblers, who are educated in cobblery” (V.456d10), which according to Taylor “implies that the producers are confined to a purely technical education” (Taylor 1986 n. 17; cf. Hourani 1949). But this is an argument from silence. The passage clearly implies that the producers are unqualified for the education received by the guardians. It does not imply that the producers are incapable of any sort of moral training. Socrates does not rule out all moral education of the producers. Taylor also makes reference to IV.430b which contrasts the correct belief of animals and slaves which is not the result of education, to be inculcated by law, with the political courage of the auxiliaries involves the latter sort of belief. But again the passage does not necessarily imply that the producers have only the sort of belief found in animals and slaves. Socrates makes a vague reference at III.414d1-5 to having educated the rulers, the soldiers, and “the rest of the city” (i.e., presumably, the producers), but unfortunately he does not say anything specific about the form this education took. 46 Brown 2004, 280 and n. 25 lists seven explicit references to compulsion: VI.500d4-8; VII.519e4, 520a8, 520e2, 521b7, 539e3, and 540b5. 47 Strauss 1964, 51–3; Burnyeat 1985, 36. 48 See II.357b1, 358a3, 360c8, 361d3, 367d3-4, 368c6. Kraut (1992, 313) cites these passages. 49 Kraut offers an eloquent description of the Platonic transformation: “We must transform our lives by recognizing a radically different kind of good—the Forms—and we must try to incorporate these objects into our lives by understanding, loving, and imitating them, for they are incomparably superior to any other kind of good we can have…. [Plato] takes the discovery of the Forms to be momentous because they are the preeminent good we must possess in order to be happy, and he takes reason to be the most worthwhile capacity of our soul because it is only through reason that we can 41
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Plato on the Rule of Reason possess the Forms” (1992, 319). Irwin (1995) and Vernezze (1992) offer similar solutions. 50 Kraut 1992, 337. 51 Some commentators argue that Socrates only means “compulsion” in a weaker sense, e.g., “necessary if they are to fulfill the requirements of justice” (Irwin 1995, 299). Brown (2000) argues convincingly that such “deflationary readings of ἀνάγκη” fail because Socrates is clear that the philosophers prefer not to rule even after they have been educated. Brown’s essay is a valuable critical overview of the controversy. 52 Kraut 1992, 337 n. 34. 53 See Cooper 1977, Annas 1981, 266–7, and White 1986. 54 Morrow 1953-4, 9. 55 Dahl 1991, 826. 56 Cooper 1977, 155–6. 57 Cooper 1977, 157. Cooper argues that the just man is neither an egoist nor an altruist: “Plato’s just man is no egoist, in any acceptable sense of this term. Not only does he not do everything he does out of concern for his own good, he never does anything for this reason. Even where he acts to benefit himself, recognizing that he does so, his reason for acting is that the good-itself demands it. That his good demands it is strictly irrelevant. By the same token, at no time does he act to benefit others out of regard for them and concern for their good, just because it is theirs. Again, he confers all benefits out of regard for the good-itself, not out of regard for these more immediate human beneficiaries … the just man is no egoist, and no altruist either, but a sort of high-minded fanatic.…” By a “fanatic” Cooper seems to mean that the just person is a sort of utilitarian, devoted to maximizing the good itself (see n. 32 above). 58 White 1986 maintains that in agreeing to rule the philosophers are moved to act contrary to their own interests. This interpretation carries a high price: the official argument of the Republic collapses. Dahl (1991, 829 n. 34) contends that “even if Plato does maintain that a philosopher sacrifices his interests when he chooses to rule, this will not undermine Plato’s overall defense of justice.” But Socrates’ response to the challenge of Glaucon and Adeimantus has been seriously compromised by this move. 59 Brown (2000, 9–10) suggests that the reason philosophers agree to rule is that the law commands them to and they have “a conception of justice which makes obedience to just laws obligatory.” Hence, “the law changes the circumstances and thereby alters how much happiness is available.” A problem with this solution is that it is unclear how acting justly in this sense makes one happier. Moreover there is little textual evidence for the legalistic conception of justice in the Republic, and the legislators’ speech to the philosophers makes no reference to the law’s command (VII.520a-d). 60 Williams 1973, 204. 61 For example, it is questionable whether Socrates argues in the way that Williams maintains because Socrates does not actually assert that the whole-part rule holds for the predicate ‘just’. Williams himself entertains the possibility that Socrates holds instead that “a city is F if and only if the leading, most influential, or predominant citizens are F” (1977, 53). Socrates clearly holds the latter version in the case of wisdom, and the suggestion is that he also holds it for justice as well.
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Fred D. Miller, Jr. On this account only the philosopher-kings possess virtue, including justice, and the city as a whole is virtuous because its rulers are. 62 See Shields 2001 for an excellent discussion of this point. Shields distinguishes three sorts of parts: (1) x is an aggregative part of y iff: (i) x is a portion of y; (ii) x can exist as x after the dissolution of y. For example, a single brick is an aggregative part of a pile of bricks. (2) x is an organic part of y iff: (i) x is a portion of y; (ii) x is a functionally defined entity; and (iii) x is parasitic on y for its identity conditions. For example, my heart is an organic part of my body. (3) x is a conceptual part of y iff: (i) x is a portion of y; (ii) x is a not a functionally defined entity; and (iii) x is parasitic on y for its identity conditions. For example, the beauty of Helen is a part of her if she is beautiful. Shields is mainly concerned with the issue of separability. If the parts of the soul distinguished in Republic Book IV can exist separately from the whole soul, this would seem to undermine the proof in Book X that the soul is immortal. Shields argues however that only aggregative parts are separable, but that the argument of Book IV is consistent with the soul having merely conceptual parts (a possibility left open by Socrates’ example of the spinning top example). Hence, the argument in Book IV does not show that the soul is composite in a sense which would contradict the claim defended in Book X that the soul is immortal. As I argue in the main text, Shields’ analysis seems to have an important implication for the parts of the city as well, although he does not discuss it. 63 As Broadie (2004, 79) observes, “Hyperrealism gives us an intelligible world thick with far more reality than needs to be postulated to make sense of our universe and of human intellectual endeavours.” 64 Broadie (2004) defends this interpretation. She mentions (78 n. 13) a passage in which the laws are a παράδειγµα for good conduct: Prot. 326c8. 65 Compare Cooper who describes the Form as “a complex, ordered whole, whose orderliness is due to the mathematical relationships holding among its parts” (1977, 155). The craftsman should endeavor to replicate this kind of order in the sensible world. 66 Burnyeat 1992 offers yet another interpretation, according to which the model city exists not in the world of Forms but in the world of imagination. “The whole Republic is an exercise in the art of persuasion, designed to lead us from here to there. The ideal city is built in our imagination by persuasive argument, in such a way that successful persuasion in the world of imagination guarantees the possibility of success in the actual world.” 67 Popper objects along similar lines: “purely formal information is all we get. Plato’s Idea of the Good nowhere plays a more direct ethical or political role …” (1966, 145). “Plato’s Idea of the Good is practically empty. It gives us no indication of what is good, in a moral sense, i.e., what we ought to do” (274). 68 Bobonich argues that the Laws explicitly asserts the compatibility of persuasion and compulsion: “none of the lawgivers has ever reflected on the fact that it is possible to use two means of giving laws, persuasion and force (πειθο› κα‹ βα).… They have used only the latter; failing to mix compulsion (ἀνάγκην) with persuasion in their lawgiving, they have employed unmitigated force alone” (Laws IV.722b5-c2, trans. Bobonich 2002, 97, adopting Ast’s emendation of ἁνάγκην for µάχην found in the manuscripts). Compare X.890b-c. The
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Plato on the Rule of Reason Athenian Stranger recommends that persuasion be provided by means of preambles or preludes attached to the laws (723a). The argument offered in Republic VII.520a-d to persuade the philosophers to serve as rulers may be viewed as a prototype of the preambles of the Laws. 69 Irwin 1977, 242–3 suggests that Plato “mistakenly suggests” that the philosopher ruler must be compelled to rule because “he is influenced by the contemplative view of the philosopher.” It seems true that the policy proposed by Socrates assumes that the philosopher values contemplation most highly. But the sort of conflict envisaged by Plato can arise if the rulers are assumed to be individual agents with any distinct values of their own. 70 These comments are only meant to be suggestive. I plan to discuss the rule of law in connection with the rule of reason in Plato’s later dialogues in a sequel to this paper. 71 This is implicit in Socrates’ argument that women are qualified to be guardians if they have a philosophical nature (Rep. V.456a). 72 Such an argument for democracy is not uncontroversial. As Runciman remarks, “Cognitive defences of democracy tend to put the emphasis on elite forms of representation and a ‘filtering’ of public opinion, in order to protect political decision-making from the unthinking preferences of the general public; as a result, they often sound distinctly undemocratic” (2004, 20). Runciman considers possible responses to this objection. The rule of reason would in any case probably not endorse extreme democracy. It would no doubt require, for example, provision for an educated and responsible electorate and constitutional constraints on majority voting. 73 I carried out the research for this essay as a visiting scholar at the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University of St. Andrews. I am grateful to John Haldane the Centre Director, Sarah Broadie, Stephen Halliwell, and Peter Woodruff for their valuable suggestions. I also benefitted from comments of Eric Brown and other Spindel Conference participants, especially Timothy Roche.
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