Abstract
Democracy is “an attractively anarchic and colourful regime, it seems, one that accords a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike” (Rep. VIII 558c2-4). The present essay raises three questions in particular. (1) What precisely is the criticism of democracy here? (2) What kind or kinds of equality and inequality matter for Plato? As all sides agree, he is interested in proportional equality more than he is in its arithmetical counterpart, so that true equality, for him, will always turn out to be a kind of (arithmetical) inequality. But (3) inequality in what? Plato undoubtedly thinks the good and wise deserve a greater share in power just because they are good and wise; does he also think, as some have claimed, that the wealthy also deserve a greater share just because they are wealthy? The answer proposed to this last question in the following essay is a clear no: even if Plato holds wealth to be a good of some sort, the possession of an unequal share of it—despite what may be suggested, prima facie, by the presence of property classes in the Laws—is not, and is not even a part of, the reason for giving the wealthy an unequal share of power. The final proposal offered by this essay is that if goodness and wisdom are indeed for Plato the only good(s) actually relevant to the distribution of power, and if—as he seems to hold—true goodness and wisdom belong only to gods, then there will be a case for saying that, even for Plato, the supposed arch-enemy of democracy, democracy (in however limited a form) turns out to be the only possible outcome, whether under non-ideal or under ideal conditions.
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Notes
- 1.
Vlastos (1981, p. 194).
- 2.
A footnote refers for this democratic sentiment to Athenagoras in Thucydides VI 38.5, along with Aristotle in Politics 1301a34.
- 3.
Vlastos’ footnote : ‘Cf. the definition of dikaiosunê at 443ab …’.
- 4.
Vlastos (1981, p. 194).
- 5.
- 6.
A passage to which I shall cite more or less in full, and discuss, in Sect. 4.3 below.
- 7.
Popper (2013, p. 92)
- 8.
This is apparently a loose paraphrase of Book VI 757a.
- 9.
That is, that everyone is naturally/born equal, which is attributed by Plato to his opponents, according to Popper , despite not being explicitly used by them.
- 10.
Thus, for example, the system of selection for membership of the upper two “classes” in the Republic presupposes significant differences in natural aptitudes. The point should not be pressed too hard, in light of what I take to be Plato’s continuing engagement with what has come to be called “Socratic” intellectualism; for intellectualism itself may well be fundamentally egalitarian in its implications. But these are topics for another occasion.
- 11.
See, e.g., Republic 558a10-b7 (cited in full in note 20 below).
- 12.
Compare the maxim “Nothing is more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people,” which towards the end of the last century seems to have begun being attributed, somewhat mysteriously (especially by elitist educationalists), to Thomas Jefferson—but might possibly be yet another example of what I claim to be the standard misreading of Plato, Republic VIII 558c3-4.
- 13.
Or rather, caricature, or satire; as he knows perfectly well, no actual democracy, past or present, has ever operated like the one he has Socrates sketch.
- 14.
Athenian democracy on the whole seems to have recognized the need to elect qualified generals, in particular (though with occasional, and disastrous, exceptions).
- 15.
Which, of course, in an ancient participatory democracy alternated to a far greater degree than they do in a modern representative democracy; “the ruled” may actually be “the rulers” next year, or even next month. Nevertheless, of course, the whole system depended on the maintenance of the distinction between “ruler” and “ruled”—and the survival of Athenian democracy , for example, for a good century and a half, in some form or another, is evidence of how well that system actually worked.
- 16.
This continues: “And the net effect of all this, … when it all comes together, is the sensitivity one readily observes in the souls of the citizens, which makes them angry and unable to put up with it if anyone tries to tie them down in the slightest respect. The final stage I think you’ll recognize: a disregard for the very laws themselves, whether written or unwritten, to make quite sure nobody lords it over them, in any way at all” (563d3-e1).
- 17.
Not, of course, men and women in Plato’s beautiful city, but that city is not what is in question in this context.
- 18.
Coming as it does just before the “terminal disease of a city,” tyranny, in the list of constitutions in Republic VIII, and after oligarchy and timocracy, democracy may appear to be valued less highly than either of the latter two. That might tempt us to suppose that democracy’s criterion for distributing power (or its lack of one) is being said to be worse than oligarchy’s as well as timocracy’s (timocracy, perhaps, being the first deviation from the best, might reasonably be expected to be rated higher). It will be one of the chief tasks of the following sections to establish what Plato thought about plutocracy. Meanwhile, I note that the order in which oligarchy and democracy are discussed—given that aristocracy/the best must come first, timocracy second, and tyranny last—is likely to have as much to do with poetic/narrative convenience (see Rep. VIII 545d-e) as anything else. And as befits a caricature or satire, the whole treatment of democracy will be an account of a (possible?) democracy, even if it builds on features taken by the caricaturist/satirizer to be typical.
- 19.
It may be objected, in defense of the Popper/Vlastos reading, that the very last feature of democracy Socrates mentions before his summing up is actually its lack of interest in excellence (Vlastos’s “merit”) when it comes to the question of the qualifications it looks for in politicians: “And the tolerance of the democratic city, its utter lack of meticulousness, its contempt for all those high-minded things we said when we were founding our city, about how only someone born with an utterly exceptional nature could ever become a good man, if from earliest childhood his play was not surrounded by beauty, and all his pursuits and activities likewise—how magnificently it tramples over all of this! It doesn’t care a bit what kinds of things a person did before he entered politics and started running things, and gives him respect on the sole condition that he declares himself well disposed towards the people” (Rep. 558a10-b7). (One might also call in aid the clause “even if he’s qualified to do so” at 557e2; though my note 14 is intended to block this). But the obvious response to this objection will be that timocracy and oligarchy “trample over all of this” no less than democracy does; they may care about the qualifications of their politicians, but not to the extent that they want them to be “good men.” If Republic 558c2-4 is supposed to be summing up the specific characteristics of democracy, it cannot be referring to its neglect of the criterion of excellence in particular (or rather, the need to nurture excellence: see text following note 10 above), though it will certainly not exclude excellence/merit (as the result of nurture).
- 20.
“Yes, Callicles, wise men claim that partnership and friendship, orderliness, self-control, and justice hold together heaven and earth, and gods and men, and that is why they call this universe an ordering (kosmos), my friend, and not an undisciplined state of disorder (akosmia). You seem to me not to pay attention attention to these things, even though you’re a wise man in these matters. You’ve failed to notice that geometrical equality (hê isotês hê geômetrikê) has great power among both gods and men, and you suppose that you ought to practice getting the greater share (i.e., when you do not deserve it, and so in contravention of the rule of geometrical equality). That’s because you neglect geometry” (Grg. 507e6-508a8, trans. Zeyl, modified).
- 21.
See Laws VI 756e-758a.
- 22.
Reading penian in c2. See below.
- 23.
The syntax of the second sentence of which is tortuous, as indicated by what has – on my reading – to be supplied (inside the two sets of square brackets) in order to make it into English or, for that matter, Greek.
- 24.
See Popper (2013, p. 571, note 20 to chapter 6).
- 25.
“The constitution proposed in the Laws has no element of monarchy at all; it is nothing but oligarchy and democracy, leaning rather towards oligarchy” (Aristotle, Pol. II 1266a5-7, trans. Jowett, modified), a claim that Aristotle goes on to explain in the following lines, ending with “Thus a preponderance will be given to the better sort of people, who have the larger incomes, because some of the lower classes (hoi dêmotikoi), not being compelled, will not vote” (1266a20-22). Not long before, however, he has suggested classifying Magnesia as a “polity”: “The whole system of government tends to be neither democracy nor oligarchy, but something of a mean between them, which is usually called a polity, and is composed of the heavy-armed soldiers” (Pol. 1265b27-9). See Sect. 4.5 below.
- 26.
Ernest Barker’s title for Book 3 is “The Lessons of History,” as Schofield reminds us.
- 27.
In Laws VI 756e-758a, a passage that explains the two different kinds of equality, arithmetic and geometrical, and indeed focusses the latter entirely on aretê (757c).
- 28.
That the four timêmata have exclusively to do with differences in wealth is shown by the rule for promotion and demotion between them (744d-e). But see further Sect. 4.4 below.
- 29.
The likelihood of a covert reference to aretê in the phrase “use of wealth” is also lessened by the fact that aretê has just been mentioned as a separate criterion (“[recognition must be given] not just to aretê, [a person’s] ancestors’ and his own …”).
- 30.
I.e., four times the value of an individual holding (V 744e). N.b. the careful phrasing in 744b7-8, ‘when they become richer instead of poor or poor instead of rich …’: wealth and poverty, in Magnesia, are strictly relative categories.
- 31.
The apparatus in the Oxford text is insufficiently informative to make it clear which reading is better supported by the manuscript evidence (both readings are found, and each has its supporters among editors); for the sake of argument I assume that the evidence will support either.
- 32.
Ending a sentence here, and beginning a new one (‘It is not just his personal virtues … but use of wealth or poverty’), which has the effect of appearing to restrict ‘worth’ to financial worth.
- 33.
In Book III, property and wealth come last in the list of things a properly organized city will value).
- 34.
Schofield himself appears to read penias.
- 35.
See I 631c4-5. Given that the whole immediate context is about wealth and property, the sudden reference to use of wealth is surprising: one might have expected a reference to wealth and/or poverty pure and simple.
- 36.
See 744d3-4.
- 37.
For a similar, but significantly different, list of goods see Laws I 631c-d.
- 38.
Republic V 454c. It is also strange that he should mention strength and beauty, and ancestral aretê, as things to be taken account of (“… so that office-holding and taxes and distributions may take account of the valuation of each person’s worth not just by reference to excellence, his ancestors’ and his own, or degree of bodily strength or good looks …,” 744b5-c1), when actually appearing not to take them into account at all. See Sect. 4.4 below.
- 39.
This sort of layering of meaning is not unusual in the Laws: for other worked examples, see Rowe (2012b, pp. 367–387).
- 40.
Strangely put before an individual’s own excellence in b7.
- 41.
VI 756b-e. At III 698b-e, the Athenian half-suggests a causal relationship between the existence of four functioning Solonian property-classes —prior to the rise of extreme democracy—and Athens’ victory at Marathon; but ultimately he seems to place that victory rather lower in the list of human achievements than we might have expected. See Rowe (2016).
- 42.
As did their Solonian counterparts in the Athens of the fifth and fourth centuries, when they gradually lost their relevance for office-holding, though not for military service (or for colonization: interestingly, following a decree of 450 colonists could only be recruited from the lowest two classes). See Hansen (1991, p. 45). But for the Athenian of the Laws that was a symptom of decline, not of improvement.
- 43.
See Sect. 4.4 below.
- 44.
See above all Apology 30b2-4, as well as Rowe (2007, chapter 1, section 1).
- 45.
The Laws was, as everyone agrees, the last work of Plato’s to be finished (if it was finished).
- 46.
And, for someone who—as all Lives of Plato inform us—was himself a member of the Athenian aristocracy, remarkably uninterested in the claims of birth.
- 47.
The kai dê kai in 757c3 might be said introduce some doubt on this point; my own view is that it merely marks the transition from the general principle to the specific—and only relevant—case.
- 48.
It’s impossible to combine extreme wealth with goodness, the Athenian declares at V 742e, or at any rate wealth as ordinarily understood; money is by its very nature a means to an end, or ends—it is for the sake of caring for the body and, more importantly, for the soul (V 743d).
- 49.
See Rowe (2010a).
- 50.
That is, as opposed to tyranny. See 757d.
- 51.
Compare the list in 757d3 of things the legislator is not to look to: “to a small group of tyrants [like the oligarchic grouping at Athens who cam to be known as the ‘Thirty Tyrants’?], or a single tyrant, or force somehow emanating from the demos.”
- 52.
See Sect. 4.2 above.
- 53.
With whom, presumably, they may very well overlap.
- 54.
That is, Trevor Saunders’s (in Cooper 1997), which I have been using, and modifying, throughout this essay.
- 55.
The Laws here is clearly applying familiar Socratic ideas, but in a new context: of the landed middle class rather than of the barefoot philosopher.
- 56.
Kraut (2010, especially section 7, “The Fragility of Magnesian Virtue”).
- 57.
Kraut (2010, p. 66).
- 58.
Kraut (2010, p. 58).
- 59.
I refer here to Hannah Arendt. See Sheffield (forthcoming).
- 60.
An argument for the ambitious claims in this sentence can be found in Rowe (2011).
- 61.
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Rowe, C.J. (2018). Plato on Equality and Democracy. In: Anagnostopoulos, G., Santas, G. (eds) Democracy, Justice, and Equality in Ancient Greece. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 132. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96313-6_4
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