Let’s do some political philosophy. Sound fun? I prefer to stick with what I’m familiar with, western philosophy.
The Thinker by Auguste Rodin
Part 1: Euthyphro and Intellectual Humility
We may as well start with Euthyphro. I hope any Plato purists among you will forgive my paraphrases and summaries of the dialogue.
Euthyphro opens in the area in front of the Athenian court. Socrates is there because he was indicted on charges of inventing new gods, refusing to believe in the existing gods, and corrupting the youth. More specifically, he was indicted on charges of impiety. (The Greek word is ὅσιος, which can be translated as pious, devout, undefiled by sin, or holy.)
As we know from historical events that took place after this dialogue, Socrates was brought to trial, convicted of impiety, and executed.
Euthyphro is in the courtyard because he is bringing charges of murder against his father. Euthyphro strikes up a conversation with Socrates and explains the facts of his case.
One day, a man, a “dependent” who worked for Euthyphro’s family, murdered a domestic servant in a fit of drunken temper. (The domestic servant was likely a woman and a slave.) Euthyphro’s father captured the murderer, tied him up, and put him in a ditch, evidently so he couldn’t escape. He then dispatched a messenger to find out from a “diviner” what he should do with the murderer. Before the messenger could return, the murderer died of cold and hunger while tied up in the ditch.
Euthyphro says this about his family’s reaction:
Euthyphro: My father and family are angry with me for taking the part of the murderer and prosecuting my father. They say that he did not kill him and that if he did, that dead man was but a murderer, and I ought not to take any notice, for that a son is impious who prosecutes a father. This shows, Socrates, how little they know what the gods think about piety and impiety.
Socrates: Good heavens, Euthyphro! Is your knowledge of religion and things pious and impious so very exact, that, supposing the circumstances to be as you state them, you are not afraid lest you too may be doing an impious thing in bringing an action against your father?
I bolded “supposing the circumstances to be as you state them” to emphasize that Socrates isn’t saying that bringing charges against one’s father is per se impious. He is asking Euthyphro whether, under these circumstances, he is afraid he may be behaving impiously by bringing the charges.
Euthyphro: The best of Euthyphro, and that which distinguishes him from other men, is his exact knowledge of all such matters. What should I be good for without it?
That’s quite a statement, right? Earlier he told Socrates that, “Every word I speak is the truth.”
Because Euthyphro is confident that he understands when an action is pious, Socrates asks to become Euthyphro’s pupil. He wants Euthyphro to teach him the meaning of impiety so that he can quote Euthyphro at his trial and thereby win an acquittal.
Euthyphro agrees to the plan. Socrates then asks a straightforward question:
Socrates: What is piety? And what is impiety?
Euthyphro: Piety is doing as I am doing; that is to say, prosecuting anyone who has committed murder, sacrilege, or any similar crime. Whether he is your father or mother, or whoever he may be makes no difference. Not to prosecute them is impiety.
Euthyphro goes on to say that because prosecuting a murderer is the right thing to do, it doesn’t matter whether the person is a relative. After all, Zeus punished (overthrew) his own father, Cronus.
Socrates points out a problem with this definition. Euthyphro has given him an example of piety, which is different from a general definition that Socrates can use to apply to other situations. What Socrates wants is “a standard to which I may look, and by which I may measure actions, whether yours or those of anyone else, and then I shall be able to say that such and such an action is pious, such another impious.”
So Euthyphro offers this standard: “Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them.”
Socrates then points out a problem with this definition: The gods do not always agree. In fact, they often quarrel and disagree. Sometimes the same act is loved by some of the gods and disliked by others. Therefore, the definition fails.
Euthyphro tries again. He says that there are some matters upon which all the gods agree, and they all agree that a murderer must be punished, so he is doing what is pious.
Socrates then makes a detour and points out that when a murderer defends himself, he rarely says that murder is pious and good. Instead, he says that in his case, the murder was justified.
(Notice that the word justify contains the word just which of course has the same roots as justice. 
I just felt like pointing that out.)
Socrates tells Euthyphro that he still hasn’t defined piety. Euthyphro digs in and says. “A pious action is one that all the gods love.”
Socrates then asks: Is an action pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is pious?
Euthyphro doesn’t see the difference.
Socrates explains that there is an enormous difference. If something is holy because the gods love it, we can never know in advance if an action is holy. We have to wait to see what the gods think. On the other hand, if the gods love an action because it is holy, there must be a quality that all holy things contain, in which case if we understand that quality, we will know in advance whether an action is just or pious.
Euthyphro says that the gods love pious acts because they are holy.
Socrates then basically says, well then, we are back where we started! We still don’t know what makes the act pious in the first place! We don’t know why the gods love the act, so we cannot tell in advance whether an act is pious or not. Therefore, we still don’t have a working definition.
Euthyphro maintains that in his own mind, the definition of piety is clear, but he cannot explain it to Socrates because “somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us.”
Socrates, who remains serenely contemplative, asks, “Is that which is just also pious?”
Yes, says Euthyphro. He then defines the relationship between piety and justice: “Piety or holiness, Socrates, appears to me to be that part of justice which attends to the gods, as there is the other part of justice which attends to men.”
I think this is an interesting point. There is morality, or what is right. Then there are laws made by humans, which may or may not be morally correct. If a law is immoral, and you follow the law, you might be a good citizen, but not a good person. A good citizen obeys the laws and falls in line. A good person may go against the current, depending on the direction of the current.
Socrates pounces on Euthyphros use of the word “attends” which is vague and doesn’t explain the relationship of piety to the gods. Euthyphro admits that his use of the word “attends” was vague, so he tries again.
Euthyphro: Piety or holiness is learning how to please the gods in word, deed, prayer, and sacrifice.
This isn’t a bad definition of piety. But Socrates points out that this definition, too, takes us right back where we started: We cannot learn how to please the gods in word, deed, and prayer if we don’t know what pleases them in advance. Once more Socrates pushes Euthyphro for a more precise definition.
Euthyphro: Another time, Socrates; for I am in a hurry, and I must go now.
With that, Euthyphro departs.
If this was typical of the kind of encounter Socrates had on the streets of Athens, it’s no wonder he was unpopular. Who likes being told that they don’t know what they’re talking about — particularly someone who has set himself up as an expert?
Much ink has been split over whether the arguments presented are sound. Churchmen later found themselves as confused as Euthyphro. Is something good because God loves it? Or does God love it because it is good?
Because Euthyphro never defined piety in a way that satisfied Socrates, the common way to read Euthyphro is that the ending results in aporia or an impasse. I don’t see an impasse at all. I don’t remember how I understood Euthyphro when I first read it as an undergraduate philosophy major decades ago. (Yes I started out as a philosophy major.) This time around, given what I learned, I believe the dialogue does make a positive statement about the nature of piety and justice. The statement is this: despite what Euthyphro thinks, it is not easy to define concepts like holiness, righteousness, or justice. Those who are so supremely confident that they never question their own judgment are more likely to participate in evil.
In other words, the lesson to glean is that dogmatism, intellectual arrogance, and black-and-white thinking are likely to lead to injustice.
In law, we have bright-line rules and we have flexible standards, or balancing tests. Bright line rules are objective and easy to apply but often result in injustice because they don’t take into account all circumstances. Balancing tests are harder to apply, more subjective, and may end up resulting in inconsistency, but (if applied wisely) can create more justice because they can account for varying circumstances.
Euthyphro can grasp only bright line rules. Murder is bad. Murderers need to be brought to justice.
Socrates pokes holes in bright line rules. He understands that circumstances can be different and that not all murders are alike.
Another way to understand the Euthyphro vs. Socrates mindsets is through the lens of political psychologists. I have often offered political psychologist Karen Stenner’s definition of the authoritarian personality:
. . . a universal, mostly heritable predisposition rooted in a closed personality and cognitive inflexibility, which reduce one’s willingness and ability, respectively, to deal with complexity.
Euthyphro is uncomfortable with complexity. He is, to borrow another of Stenner’s phrases, a “simple-minded avoider of complexity.” Socrates, in contrast, is not only comfortable with complexity, he believes the purpose of life is to delve into the complexity of human matters. As he famously says later at his trial, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Euthyphro is also uncomfortable with Socrates’s method of questioning. He acts as if something nefarious is happening. He feels tricked. “Our arguments,” he says, “seem to turn around and walk away from us.” In the end, he recoils completely.
Elsewhere Socrates explained why he is going around Athens engaging in these kinds of conversations. When the Oracle of Delphi revealed that Socrates was the wisest man in Athens, he didn’t believe it because he knew he wasn’t wise. But the oracle never lies. So he set out to prove the oracle wrong by finding a man wiser than him. His method was to closely question anyone who claimed to have wisdom. This resulted in the kind of conversations Socrates had with Euthyphro. A lot of people, like Euthyphro, became uncomfortable. Some believed that Socrates was doing something dangerous and nefarious by examining and calling into question basic “truths,” particularly those that religion and government rested upon.
The closer you look at Euthyphro, the more interesting things you can find. For example, when the men first begin talking, we learn that Euthyphro claims he always speaks the truth, yet the public response is that people laugh at him. Socrates, on the other hand, claims not to know the truth. He insists he is simply trying to discover the truth from people wiser than he is. Yet it is Socrates who has aroused so much anger among the population that he is about to be executed by irate Athenians.
Shortly after the two men begin speaking, we also learn that Socrates would never bring charges against anyone:
Euthyphro: What are you doing in the Porch of the King Archon? Surely you cannot be concerned in a suit before the King, like myself?
Socrates: Not in a suit, Euthyphro; impeachment is the word which the Athenians use.
Euthyphro: What! I suppose that someone has been prosecuting you, for I cannot believe that you are the prosecutor of another.
Socrates: Certainly not.
By the end of the dialogue, we understand why Socrates would never bring charges against anyone. To bring criminal charges against a person and seek to have the person punished, you have to be certain that the person deserves punishment, and for that, you need to believe that the behavior was not justified, which is more difficult than it sounds because you have to define “justified” and examine the behavior from all angles.
Every defense lawyer has encountered a few Euthyphros across the table. “But they broke the law!” the prosecutor says. “Therefore, they deserve punishment!” But what if they didn’t know what they did was wrong? What if the harm caused was trivial and nobody was bothered? What if, because of brain defects, they were unable to control their actions? Moreover, what do you mean by “deserved”?
“What if the defendant was an abused woman with a mental illness that wasn’t controlled because her abuser withheld her medication and one night, she ran away and hid in the park? Because she had been drinking, she stumbled and accidentally damaged public property?”
“She was drunk in the park! She was in the park after hours! She damaged property! She broke the law! I must uphold justice!” (*slams table*)
Before law school, I taught English at the college and university level. I observed that students were often quick to judge characters and slow to empathize with them. I saw this as a problem. What is the purpose of literature if not to enlarge our ability to empathize? It seems to me that point of the humanities is to make us more humane, which — it also seems to me — requires less judging and more empathy.
To prosecute is to judge. Moreover, punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain on another person. In criminal matters, the government is inflicting pain on an individual. Punishment increases the level of suffering in the world by inflicting more pain. (If you are leaping up to refute me with Kant’s theory of retribution, hold your horses. We will get to Kant farther down the road.)
If Euthyphro ever paused to consider the full story regarding his father and the servant who murdered a slave, we have no indication of that. He sees no nuance or moral ambiguity in the circumstances. He is 100% confident in his own judgment.
The dialogue is thus about the virtues of intellectual humility vs. intellectual arrogance. Those who are intellectually humble recognize the limits of their own understanding and appreciate the complexity of human situations. They are slower to judge and less likely to inadvertently (and unnecessarily) increase the level of suffering in the world.
This brings me to the famous words of Judge Learned Hand (yes that really was his name):
Learned Hand is talking about the dangers of intellectual arrogance. The philosopher Bertrand Russell quipped once that he would never die for his beliefs because “I might be wrong.”
This is what I see now in Euthyphro. Plato, of course, could not have intended his dialogue to be about TV lawyers, but what makes a literary work great is that it speaks to us across the centuries and offers perspective on the modern world.
Had Socrates lived during our current information disruption, I am sure he would question every headline. He would probe every slogan. He would pick apart every statement made by every candidate. He would not be fooled by easy answers. He would reject bumper-sticker maxims like “Justice Matters.” He would not believe whatever news sources told him if he suspected the news sources were manipulating him by confirming his biases.
I have often thought that the whole idea of political “messaging” is problematic. If we need “messaging,” there is an inherent problem with democracy. Democracy requires people able to think about complex matters. The idea that messaging is what matters assumes that people must be given simple bumper-sticker messages.
The problem is that the truth is nuanced and cannot fit onto a bumper sticker.
Someone (I have forgotten who) said, “I have a little Hamlet in me.” It seems to me that people in a functioning democracy should strive to say, “I have a little Socrates in me.”
Intellectual humility, by the way, needn’t lead to nihilism. There is good and justice, but knowledge of these things is like a mathematical limit: If we keep trying, we can get closer to a perfect understanding, and theoretically, we can arrive, but, because we are human, we never do.
“But Teri, you’re wrong! The truth can fit onto a bumper sticker!”
Chapter Two: Antigone
Now I’d like to loop back farther in time to what is arguably the first work of western political and legal philosophy, Antigone, a play written by Sophocles. (This is the translation I’ll use). Once we get started, you’ll see why Antigone is next.
Even if you’ve never heard of Antigone, you have probably heard of her famous father, Oedipus, the King of Thebes, who inspired Freud’s famous phrase, The Oedipus Complex. When Oedipus was born, a seer announced that he was cursed: He would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. To foil the prophesy, his father took the infant far away and abandoned him to die, but a shepherd rescued the infant (not knowing the baby was the prince) and, as you might guess given that we are in the realm of Greek mythology, a series of unforeseen consequences caused Oedipus to kill his father (not knowing it was his father) and marry his mother (not knowing it was his mother.) Then, in the spirit of classical tragedies, in the end all the main characters die.
Oedipus had four children, two sons and two daughters. Antigone was one of the daughters.
When Antigone opens, her parents are dead, and she and her sister just learned that their two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, died fighting in opposite sides of a war. Polyneices fought against Creon, Antigone’s uncle. Eteocles fought on Creon’s side. Creon became king at the end of the fighting. The new king, Creon, was understandably angry at Polyneices.
The play’s conflict is given in the opening dialogue between the strong-willed Antigone and her cool-headed sister, Ismene. I’ll summarize the opening scene here (I hope the Sophocles purists will forgive some summarizing and paraphrasing):
Antigone:
Ismene, my dear sister. You are and I are left to pay the penalty to the gods for the sins of our father. I have never seen such misery and madness! Have you heard the terrible news?
Ismene:
I have heard nothing since the day we lost both our brothers.
Antigone:
I knew you hadn’t heard! That is why I called you here.
Ismene:
Tell me!
Antigone:
Eteocles, who fought on Creon’s side, has been given a proper burial. But Polyneices is to be shamed. Creon has decreed that his body is to be left to the vultures to be a sweet treasure for their sharp eyes and beaks. He also proclaimed that anyone who attempts to give Polyneices a proper burial will be stoned to death.
Now, my sister, show your true colors. Are you true to your birth? Or are you a coward?
Ismene:
I don’t understand. If we are in this noose, what could I do to pull or tighten the knot?
Antigone:
If you help me raise the corpse —
Ismene:
Do you mean to bury Polyneices against the law?
Antigone:
He is mine. And yours. Like it or not, he’s our brother. They’ll never catch me betraying him.
Ismene:
But Creon forbids it!
Antigone:
He has no right to keep me from my own.
Ismene:
Think carefully, my sister. Our father died in hatred and disgrace. Next, his mother and wife (she was both) destroyed herself in a knotted rope. Now both our brothers, in one day, killed each other in a terrible calamity. We are alone. How horrible it would be to die outside the law, if we violate Creon’s decree!
No. We must keep this fact in mind: We are women. We do not fight with men. We’re subject to them because they are stronger and we must obey this order, even if it hurts us more. The dead will understand that we are held back by force.
Antigone:
I will not press you any further. I would not even let you help me If you had a change of heart. I will bury him. I will have a noble death. Call it a crime of reverence but I must be true to what I revere. You keep to your choice: Go on insulting what the gods hold dear.
Ismene:
I am not insulting anyone. By my very nature I cannot take up arms against the city.
I am so worried for you!
Antigone:
Don’t worry about me. Put your own values straight.
Ismene:
Your heart’s so hot to do this chilling thing!
Antigone:
But it pleases those who matter most.
Ismene:
Yes, if you had the power. But you don’t have the power to do this.
Antigone
When you say this, you set yourself against me. Nothing bad will happen to me that is half as bad as dying a coward’s death. Go on insulting what the god’s hold dear.
(Antigone exits)
Ismene:
Then follow your judgment. Go. You’ve lost your mind, but you are holding to the love of your loved ones.
Notice how much is going on in that opening, including gender issues — women are subjected to men because men are stronger. Mostly though, the play presents issues of political and legal theory. We have the individual against the ruler. We have conflicting laws: the higher law of morality that Antigone is prepared to follow versus the secular (or state law) that she is prepared to violate. We have echoes of crime and punishment. It’s all here in a powerful story with strong characters.
We also have a theme hinted at in Euthyphro: On one side, there is morality, or what is right. On the other, there are laws made by humans, which may or may not lead to justice. If a law is unjust, and you follow the law, you might be a good citizen, but not a moral person. Going against the law is dangerous, so Ismene prefers to be a good citizen. Antigone would rather be a moral person.
The terms used by legal philosophers are positive law, which refers to human made laws and natural law, which refers to the higher morality that properly governs human behavior. Human beings can discover natural laws through their capacity for rational analysis. Positive laws, in contrast, are issued by legitimate governments.
You can probably guess where this is going. (Hint: It’s a tragedy so it ends with lots of death.) Antigone defies the law of the city in the name of a higher law: the law of kinship, loyalty, family, and morality. Creon then orders Antigone to be buried alive as her punishment. In a fit of anger, he decrees that Ismene must die with her sister, but later changes his mind. The problem for Creon was that public opinion was with Antigone. “The entire city is grieving over this girl,” reports Creon’s son Haemon (who is also Antigone’s fiance) when he tries to get his father to change his mind. He warns his father that the people of the city believe Antigone should be rewarded for her devotion and courage instead of punished. When Haemon can’t change his father’s mind, he kills himself. Creon’s wife kills herself when she learns about the death of her son.
At the last minute — before Creon learns that his wife and son are dead — he has a change of heart. A prophet and the chorus urge him to change his mind. The people of the city are sympathetic to Antigone and they let him know that the law of the city is secondary to the law of the gods, which determines burial rights. But Creon’s change of heart — or moment of wisdom — comes too late to save himself and the other main characters. Only Ismene is spared.
Death in a classical tragedy is symbolic. Romeo and Juliet die because young love — that first blush of passion — doesn’t last. It might mature into something more stable and lasting, but it can’t last with the intensity of young Romeo and Juliet.
The fact that Antigone is a Greek tragedy gives us clues about how to interpret the action. Aristotle tells us that a great tragedy centers around a noble or lofty figure who falls because of a flaw or mistake. Tragic heroes make their tragic errors without evil intent, but as a result of the error, they bring about their own destruction and the destruction of those closest to them.
The play is named after Antigone, so you might think she is the central, tragic figure. If you view her as the tragic figure you’re likely to see the play as a conflict between a dictator and a conscientious citizen, or between good and evil, or between a woman and a patriarchy.
One problem with seeing Antigone as the central, tragic character, is that much of the action, including Creon’s change of heart, happens after she dies. It is also hard to see her as falling from a lofty position. Yes, she was a princess, but one without parents or power. Moreover, she was a woman in a culture that gave women no power or voice. Finally, we have to search for her tragic flaw. She is not without her faults. She is headstrong and doesn’t consider what her own death will do to her sister, who will then have lost every single member of her immediate family. But stubborn steadfastness in the face of a tyrant hardly seems like a tragic flaw.
The German philosopher Hegel said that Antigone was “one of most sublime and in every respect the most excellent work of art of all time.” He rejected the good vs. evil interpretation as failing to capture the complexity of the plot. He interpreted the play as being about opposing moral claims.
Under Hegel’s theory, Creon’s claim is that justice means punishing infractions. His position is that the citizen’s highest obligation is to follow the law. If they don’t, there is no order and civilization breaks down.
Antigone’s claim is that justice means doing what is right. For Antigone, a citizen’s highest obligation is to follow her conscience and do what is right. If the law is unjust, the law must be disregarded.
Seeing the play as presenting two opposing moral claims respects the complexity of the plot, but presents another problem: It is hard to see these two competing views as equal given that Creon’s order is cruel and capricious.
Prof. Michael Tierney offers a better interpretation. Tierney sees Creon as the tragic figure who began in a lofty position as the new king, but made a tragic error in judgment. He didn’t understand that state law, to have legitimacy, must conform to what is good or moral. By the time he realized his error, it was too late. He had already set the tragic events in motion.
The idea that state laws should bend to a higher morality is an enlightened view. The older view (which came back into vogue in Europe in the middle ages) is some form of the divine rights of kings, which says that a king derives authority from God (or the gods) and therefore, anything he does is good in the eyes of God. The divine rights of kings leads to: “I have might. Therefore, I am right.”
Nope, says Antigone. You have might, but you still have to do what the gods consider right.
Antigone dies a martyr’s death for that higher law. Creon’s contempt for that higher law brings about his ruin. Meanwhile, Ismene knows Antigone is right, but she also knows that we break the city’s law at our peril.
Sophocles understood the concept of natural law versus positive law. As Antigone says, the laws she follows are “unwritten laws. These laws weren’t made now or yesterday. They live for all time.”
If you read Chapter 1 in this series, you’re probably jumping up right now and saying, “Wait a minute! It isn’t that easy to agree on what constitutes natural law.” Euthyphro and Socrates had different ideas about what was just or right. Neither was able to persuade the other. Even after Socrates expertly debunked Euthyphro’s reasoning, it is unlikely that Euthyphro gave up his own ideas of right and wrong.
Public support solidified behind Antigone and helped bring about Creon’s change of heart, but Athens was a relatively small, homogenous non-secular city-state. The Ancient Greek religion was tightly entwined in the political and social life of the Greek city-state and the private activities of the individuals. Athenians, therefore, could agree that Creon was violating natural law.
The idea that state-based laws must conform to universal moral principles is all well and good — but what happens if citizens have different ideas about what constitutes moral law? A scientist can conduct an experiment to prove (for most people at least) the laws of physics.
But what experiment can prove laws of morality?
A white Evangelical Christian living in Tennessee is likely to have different ideas about what makes a government moral than a person living in San Francisco or Berkeley. A libertarian will have a different idea of what constitutes a moral government than a climate change activist. If half the nation holds one set of natural laws, and half the nation holds another, a lawbreaker may be glorified by part of the nation and condemned as a criminal by another part.
See the problem?
Chapter Three: Democracy, Oligarchy, and Tyranny
Plato’s Republic offers the perfect vehicle for discussing the interplay (and overlap) between democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny. We’ll also find clues about why Socrates was later executed.
Book 1 opens with Socrates out and about Athens, striking up conversations with people and often annoying them. Once more, as in Euthyphro, he gets into a discussion about the meaning of justice, this time with Cephalus, a wealthy elderly man who tells Socrates that the greatest benefit of his wealth is that he was always able to pay his debts and thus he never had deceive others. He concludes that the wealthy can live just and noble lives because they do not need to cheat or deceive others.
But wait, says Socrates. Is living a just life really nothing more than paying one’s debts? Suppose a friend deposits a deadly weapon with me and then, when he is not in his right mind, asks me to give it back. Surely giving it back in that case would not be the right thing to do, even though I literally owe him the weapon. Right?
Cephalus suddenly has to leave. We saw the same thing in Euthyphro. The moment Socrates asked a hard question that Euthyphro couldn’t answer, Euthyphro remembered he had business to attend to and left. This time, another rich guy, Polemarchus, one of the guys hanging around listening, takes up the argument on behalf of Cephalus and gives this definition of justice: Repayment of debt doesn’t mean literally repaying debts. It means “giving every man what is proper to him.”
Socrates had an easy time poking holes in this one because who decides what is proper? What if different people have different ideas? Who is the arbiter?
Throughout this discussion a guy named Thrasymachus kept trying to speak. Eventually, like a “wild beast seeking to devour” the others, he “roared” out, “What folly has taken possession of you all?”
Now that he has grabbed the stage, he offers what he says is the real definition of justice. “Justice,” he says, “is nothing more than the interest of the stronger.” He then (basically) says this:
There are three forms of government: tyranny, aristocracy, and democracy. (The one, the few, and the many.) In a tyranny, the tyrant controls the government. In a democracy, the ordinary people control government. In an aristocracy, the aristocrats control govenment. Each government makes laws with a view toward its own interests. The government then punishes the transgressors as unjust lawbreakers.
And that is what I mean when I say that in all states there is the same principle of justice: whatever is in the interest of the government, and as the government must be supposed to have power, the only reasonable conclusion is that everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger (because that is who controls the government.)
Socrates points out that in saying justice is whatever serves the interests of the strong, Thrasymachus is simply arguing that injustice is a virtue, which reduces all to a competition: The strongest can do as they please, and surely that isn’t right.
Aside: There is a now-outdated legal principle called caveat emptor, which is Latin for “buyer beware.” Caveat emptor places the burden on buyers to examine property before purchase and take responsibility for its condition. It means that the buyer, or consumer, assumes the risks if a product is defective, or if the product isn’t what the consumer wanted.
And now I will tell you a true story about the concept of caveat emptor. In 1804, a man named Mr. Woods—that really was his name—was selling lumber in a market in New York that specialized in a very expensive brand of wood called braziletto wood. Mr. Woods sold some lumber to a Mr. Seixas. When Mr. Seixas bought the wood, Mr. Woods gave him a “bill of parcel” describing the wood as braziletto wood. Mr. Seixas paid a high but fair price for the braziletto wood.
Later, Mr. Seixas discovered that Mr. Woods had in fact sold him inferior-quality wood known as peachum. He brought Mr. Woods to court and demanded his money back in exchange for return of the wood.
The judge thought it was a clear case for Mr. Woods because Mr. Seixas had plenty of opportunity to examine the wood before he bought it. Mr. Woods gave no express written warranty, and—according to the court—the written description in the bill of parcels did not count as a written warranty. Mr. Woods, according to the court, had done nothing wrong under the law and Mr. Seixas was not entitled to his money back. (The case is called Seixas and Seixas v. Woods, 2 Cai. R. 48 (1804).)
Then along came consumer protection laws and laws against false advertisement that protect people from begin taken advantage of by unscrupulous people.
In case you think that Thrasymachus ideas are outdated, lots of people today remain opposed to regulatory agencies and consumer protection laws. They hold to the idea that if you are fooled, it is your problem and justice means the strong (or clever, or tricksters) win.
Socrates, though, isn’t having it. He argues that justice cannot possibly mean “whatever benefits the strong” because all of life isn’t a competition. Sometimes people must work together.
Now it falls on Socrates to offer a definition of justice. To do so, he constructs the ideal state, because, he says, the ideal state will embody the idea of justice.
Socrates begins by explaining that people come together to form political units and live under governments because individuals cannot meet all of their own needs or protect themselves from those who would rob them. In an ideal society, all people do the work for which they are best suited. This means that the wisest people are the rulers, the strongest people protect the city from outsiders and enforce laws, and the others — the craft and artisan class — do whatever work suits them best.
(As a complication, remember that slavery was an accepted institution in Athens. Socrates here is talking about free citizens, not all people.)
The Republic
In the ideal republic that Socrates imagines, the Rulers are philosophers, which literally means that they love wisdom. They are not permitted to own private property because if they do, they might rule in their own economic interests instead of for the benefit of the republic as a whole. They also share wives and children which, presumably eliminates jealousies and rivalries. (Neat way to solve the problem of coveting thy neighbor’s wife.).
The Soldiers protect the city and enforce the laws. The problem is how to prevent them from using their strength to seize power for themselves. Socrates says they must be like dogs: Fierce to outsiders who threaten the city, but gentle and friendly to the residents. They, too, share wives and children and are forbidden to own private property which, presumably, keeps them from becoming greedy.
The Common People are content because there is income equality and a just economic system, so they do not envy or resent the philosopher-kings. They are happy because they work at the craft that best suits them and, because of this efficiency, all citizens prosper. (All citizens also prospers equally.)
Women in Socrates’ ideal society have equal rights and status with men. Women can even become rulers or guardians because many women are every bit as fierce and strong as men.
In a democracy, Socrates says, the leaders are called “rulers.” In a tyranny, they are called “masters.” But, in his ideal state the leaders are allies. There is true unity.
How to establish and maintain this ideal state: Here is where things get sketchy. Governments, Socrates explains, like all things that are part of the mortal world, have beginnings and ends. An ideal state like this one will dissolve because people are human and make mistakes and eventually the wrong people will be selected as rulers or become guardians, and these people will use their power for their own benefit instead of the common good and the downward slope will begin.
To prevent this downward slope, Socrates basically argues that people in his ideal Republic must be tricked into doing what is in their best interest. They are told Big Lies to keep them in their places; a form of eugenics is practiced to make sure that only the strong become guardians and only the wise create the laws. There is also strict censorship. Poets and dramatists are to be banned because people might get the wrong ideas.
Amid this totalitarian ideal, he throws in a bit of wisdom: If people avoid confections and eat only roasted meat, there will be no need for doctors. In his ideal state, therefore, people will eat foods that will keep them healthy.
Socrates avoids the question of how this ideal republic will be established in the first place. What he is presenting, he says, is an ideal. Governments should strive for this ideal, and the closer they come, the more just the government and economic system. Justice for Socrates, therefore, means everyone does the work for which they are best suited, which creates a more prosperous city, and there is complete economic equality.
Much ink has been spilt over the centuries analyzing and criticizing this ideal republic, which has aspects of socialism, Stalinism, and Orwellian totalitarianism. It is certainly not democratic.
We come then to Book VIII, when Socrates explains why he distrusts democracy. In a nutshell, he doesn’t trust people. In fact, the entire Republic is structured around a distrust of people. The rulers and guardians cannot own property because he doesn’t trust them not to get greedy and want more. The common people have no voice in government because he doesn’t trust common people to make the right decisions. He doesn’t even like exclusive sexual relationships, because the next thing you know, neighbors will be coveting each other’s spouses.
To understand Socrates’s dislike of democracy, we must first have a look at Athenian democracy so we can see what Socrates was actually criticizing. All democracies are not alike.The word “democracy,” in fact, is better understood as a concept instead of a concrete noun. Better yet, it’s an adjective as in, “How democratic is the government?”
Athenian Democracy
Athenian democracy was direct rather than representative. All citizens could vote and were required to participate in government. All leadership positions, including judges and military generals, were chosen randomly from the people, which is about as democratic as a democracy can be.
Here’s the catch: “Citizens” included only adult men who were not slaves. The enslaved population in Athens was 15–20 % of the overall population. For comparison, the enslaved population in the United States on the eve of the Civil War was 18% of the total population. I don’t know whether the similarity in numbers was coincidental, or whether it is simply difficult to enslave a higher percentage of the population.
Four Forms of Government, Why they Fail, and What Happens when They Fail
The ideal government — the Republic Socrates described — is not actually possible. What is possible, according to Socrates, are 4 forms of government based on different values.
(1) Timocracy (rule by the military) is based on the value of honor.
The example is Sparta, which was basically a military state, and which Socrates also tells us was “mostly applauded.” All citizens were dedicated to the good of the city, the military ruled on behalf of the city at large, all citizens went through the same rigorous military training, and women had more rights in Sparta than anywhere else in Greece. Socrates praises this government because there is unity. Passions are tamed and harmonized.
The problem with timocracy, Socrates explains, is that if the soldiers can own property, their love of money and wealth will grow, until pretty soon valor and honor will no longer he valued. Instead, what will be valued is wealth.
When love of honor turns to love of money, the government will decline into oligarchy.
(2) Oligarchy (rule by a few) is based on the value of wealth. The root sin of this government is greed.
Oligarchy, Socrates tells us “teems with evils.” Oligarchs get greedier and greedier and pass laws so they can increase their own wealth. The city then ends up divided between the wealthy and the poor, which creates class warfare and strife. Oligarchs become afraid of the common people.
Because of the growing income inequality that occurs when the wealthy govern for their own benefit, there will arise a class of criminals and beggars, some of which will be harmless, but many of which will be dangerous. The dangerous ones will stir the common people to revolution against the oligarchs. When the revolt succeeds and poorest citizens seize power, a government based on the value of money will (according to Socrates) decline into democracy.
(3) Democracy (rule by many) based on the value of freedom. (Brace yourselves. Socrates sees this as a problem.)
Each person is encouraged to do whatever he or she pleases, so there will be chaos. Plain speech is encouraged. Passions are unleashed. People do whatever work they please, which means that there will be waste, and incompetent people will be elected to office. Presumably philosophers become beggars, incompetents run the government, and the weak serve as generals.
Order breaks down. Karen Stenner quotes Eric Fromm who, “In Escape from Freedom,” argued that a portion of humanity finds freedom burdensome. Democracy gets messy. There are people who prefer order.
Another problem with the democratic value of equality, according to Socrates, is that not all people are fit to be military generals, and not all people are fit to be rulers.
The meaning of equality: Today we equate the word ‘equality’ with racial and gender equality. There was no racial, cultural, or religious diversity in ancient Greece. Socrates was speaking strictly of abilities. Moreover, his idea of democracy is not a representative democracy, it is a direct democracy where each person is the literal equivalent of the other. All people are considered equally capable of ruling the land, leading an army, or building a temple.
In a democracy, Socrates tells us, people are driven by “unnecessary desires.” (Necessary desires include food, shelter, and clothing. Unnecessary desires include luxuries and items that lead to a decadent lifestyle.) The oligarch wants to hoard money. The democratic man demands luxuries.
Democracy then divides into a few groups. First, there are the fiercest individuals who become dominant political figures by virtue of their ferocity. Some will become wealthy. Others will remain poor. Because people can do as they please, before long there will be a large group of people who pay no attention to their own government.
(4) Tyranny (rule by one)
Tyranny — Socrates tells us — springs naturally from democracy. It comes about when troublemakers stir the the poor against the rich. A leader of the people (literally a demagogue) leads the people to revolt. They topple the government, and install their leader as a tyrant (who they think will rule on their behalf). The tyrant then kills the good people for fear that they will supplant him. To distract people from what he is doing, he must constantly make war.
This should call to mind the French Revolution and its aftermath. (With differences, of course. The French overthrew a monarchy, not a democracy. The people executed were the nobility.)
The Overlap (and Interplay) between Democracy and Oligarchy in the United States
One bit of wisdom we find in The Republic is that governments take their personality from the people who control them. Another is that governments are constantly in flux, changing from one thing to another.
The drafters of the United States Constitution read The Republic, understood the criticism the ancients had about democracy, and understood the danger of a demagogue coming to power. They also knew that Athenian democracy ultimately failed when it dissolved into oligarchy.
The drafters created a Constitution that they believed would guard against the danger of a tyrant seizing power. For example, the Electoral College was created as a way to give sensible (well-educated men) a mechanism for preventing a tyrant from coming to office. Judges appointed for life with a guaranteed fixed income was intended to allow judges to make what they believed to be the best decisions instead of decisions that would enable them to be reelected. Should a tyrant be elected, power was divided to prevent the tyrant from seizing too much power.
The Interplay between Oligarchy and Democracy
Socrates didn’t consider cultural and racial diversity as a factor in how governments change because in his world, city-states were small and homogenous.
The United States was similarly founded by a small homogenous group of white, Protestant, well-educated and mostly wealthy men. During the era of what we call Jacksoninan Democracy (named for Andrew Jackson) “we the people” expanded to include poor white Protestant men as well as wealthy white Protestant men.
Despite enslavement and a ruling elite, the United States was democratic in that the leaders were elected by the voters and served for limited times. Authority was derived from a written constitution instead of the whim of a person. Power was divided to keep any single person from seizing too much of it.
Oligarchy #1: At the same time, antebellum America more closely resembled what today we would call an oligarchy because a small percentage of people controlled all the nation’s wealth and resources. Historian Heather Cox Richardson, in fact, calls antebellum America an oligarchy because wealthy plantation owners, 1% of the population, controlled 90% of the nation’s wealth and (mostly) controlled all three branches of the federal government.
Restoration and the expansion of democracy: After the Civil War, the United States experienced a brief period when democracy expanded, allowing Black men to participate in politics, but the push back was immediate and fierce. In 1896, the Supreme Court, which was mostly sympathetic to the former Confederacy, ruled segregation constitutional.
Oligarchy #2: At the same time, the newly empowered industrial North passed laws that benefited industry, and we entered another oligarchy: The age of robber barons. A relatively small number of industrialists enjoyed opulent wealth, while most people — those who labored — had very little protection. There was no minimum wage, no social security, and no workers protections. Workers could not break out of the poverty cycle. Racial segregation was legal. Women could vote but were kept from the professions, which kept them dependent on men.
Heather Cox Richardson calls the age of robber barons our second oligarchy.
The New Deal and Civil Rights movements create more democracy: Then along came Franklin Delano Roosevelt with his New Deal, which eliminated much of the income inequality (we had no billionaires in the 1970s), created our first true middle class, and allowed for more democracy by allowing more people to participate in public life. The Civil Rights movement allowed non-whites to participate in public life.
Oligarchy #3: The pushback occurred immediately. Ronald Reagan’s economics and tax cuts for the rich and other Republican economic policies have brought us back to the brink of a new oligarchy as today’s income inequality is approaching pre-1930s levels.
The nature of the cycle: Racial, cultural, and religious diversity creates a dynamic unknown to Socrates. Political psychologist Karen Stenner explains that some people cannot tolerate complexity, and diversity is a form of complexity. As a democracy becomes more democratic and expands to include more people (and thus becomes more diverse) those who are averse to diversity become vulnerable to the promises of a leader who promises to restore “order.” This is what Stenner calls the Authoritarian Dynamic.
What comes next?
If past is prologue, we may be destined to cycle in and out of oligarchy.
Chapter 4: The Subversive Element
Plato’s The Apology recounts the defense Socrates offered at his trial. (I’ll use this translation). It’s called the The Apology, but make no mistake: Socrates does not offer an apology. If anything, he thumbs his nose a bit at his judges. What he offers is a defense of the way he lived his life. (The word “apology” comes from the ancient Greek word, “apologia,” which means “defense.”)
By the time Socrates was put on trial, he was well known throughout Athens. He had been lampooned by major playwrights, briefly served in public office, and over the years, made a great many political enemies.
Recall from Part 3 that Socrates was critical of democracy as a form of government. (He was also critical of oligarchy.) To understand the political context for the trial, we need a timeline:
About 501 BCE: A representative democracy was established in Athens. All free males (not all people) had an equal voice in government. For why we call this a democracy, see last week’s blog post. Also recall that all positions in Athenian government, including military generals, were elected.
415 – 413 BCE: Sicilian Disaster: The Athenians undertook a disastrous military campaign in Sicily. The campaign had popular support, but it was poorly conceived and executed. Afterward, many Athenians blamed the disaster on the democratic government because the military leaders, who relied on votes, made crowd-pleasing decisions instead of smart military decisions.
411 BCE: Because of the Sicilian Disaster, democracy as a form of government lost the support of a number of prominent (aristocratic) Athenians. As a result, an Oligarchy of the 400 was able to take over the government. Under the Oligarchy of 400, only 5,000 citizens selected by the 400 oligarchs had political power.
The Oligarchy of 400 lasted only 4 months before it was replaced by yet another government, this time fully in the hands of the 5,000 and a bit more democratic.
406 BCE: Six generals won a battle, but failed to collect the fallen from the battlefield. If you read Part II, Antigone, you know how important it was for Athenians to give the dead a proper burial. The six generals were put on trial and executed. It turned out that a violent storm prevented the generals from collecting the bodies. Socrates, who was then a senator (the only time he held public office) was critical of the trial, which he believed was conducted illegally partly because the generals were tried together instead of individually.
404-403 BCE: The thirty tyrants, a group of oligarchs led by the brutal tyrant Critias, took over the government. Critias was a “student” of Socrates. (I put “student” in parenthesis because, in his defense, Socrates denied that he was a teacher, which meant Critias could not be his student.) The fact one of his “students” or admirers became a brutal dictator did not endear Socrates to the public.
403: BCE: Democracy was restored in Athens after Critias died.
399 BCE: Socrates was put on trial and executed.
You can see from this timeline where Socrates got the idea that all governments have beginnings and ends, with one form of government giving way to another.
Another reason Socrates was unpopular: Recall that Socrates spent his time out and about Athens, where he annoyed people by calling into question their firmly held beliefs. As a general rule, if you want to be popular, tell people what they want to hear or what they already know. Avoid calling into question their deeply held views or biases. (I talked about this in the Introduction and Part 1.)
Socrates was charged with impiety and corrupting the youth. Here is how he describes the charges against him:
As part of his defense, Socrates explains that he has two sets of accusers: Those who are currently bringing charges against him, and those who have been spreading rumors about him for years. Nobody ever answered the early rumor-spreaders. Now he must do so, and it’s harder to address rumors and innuendos than direct accusations, so the rumor-spreaders are more dangerous than his actual accusers. Because the rumors have been spreading since his accusers and judges were children, the rumors have “taken possession” of their minds.
In other words, he claims that the judges (and jurors) are biased against him.
At the same time, Socrates acknowledges that, had he lived like other men, “All this great fame and talk” about him would never have arisen.
He explains how he made enemies: When the Oracle of Delphi revealed that he was the wisest man in Athens, he didn’t believe it because he knew he wasn’t wise. But the gods never lie, so he set out to prove the oracle wrong by trying to find a man wiser than him. His method was to closely question anyone who claimed to have wisdom. As a result, he went around Athens questioning people and revealing their ignorance. He understood, to his “sorrow and alarm” that he was becoming unpopular, but he felt compelled to continue his investigation.
What he learned was that the only difference between him and those who believed themselves wise, or who had a reputation for being wise, was that he knew he was ignorant whereas they wrongly believed they possessed knowledge.
He denies that he was ever a teacher, evidently to rebut the unspoken accusation that he was responsible for Critias’s actions:
“if you have heard from anyone that I undertake to teach people and charge a fee for it, that is not true either.”
He is referring here to the sophists, the teachers in ancient Greece who traveled and charged money for lessons, mostly in rhetoric and methods of persuasion. They were often loathed because (in the view of listeners) they made the worse argument appear stronger. The word “sophist” comes from the Greek word for “wisdom,” but because the sophists were widely despised, the word “sophistry” still has a bad connotation today.)
“Making the worse argument appear stronger” is an interesting accusation. Isn’t that just another way of saying, “That person is giving credence to something I believe is obviously wrong?” I suppose lawyers, who are often arguing the “wrong” side (particularly criminal defense lawyers!) evoke similar emotions.
Socrates insisted that he never possessed enough wisdom to be a teacher, so he never put himself forward as one. He distinguished himself from the sophists (teachers) because he never charged a fee.
If you google “Socrates, Plato, teacher” you will find that modern scholars accept without question that Socrates was Plato’s teacher, which means they think Socrates was a teacher. Socrates’s argument goes like this: Teachers charge money. I don’t charge money. Therefore, I am not a teacher.
He then explained how he acquired a reputation for corrupting the young:
“The young men who follow me around of their own free will, those who have most leisure, the sons of the very rich, take pleasure in hearing people questioned; they themselves often imitate me and try to question others.”
“The result is that those whom they question are angry, not with themselves but with me. They say: ‘That man Socrates is a pestilential fellow who corrupts the young.’”
“If one asks them what he does and what he teaches to corrupt them, they are silent, as they do not know, but, so as not to appear at a loss, they mention those accusations that are available against all philosophers, about “things in the sky and things below the earth,” about “not believing in the gods” and “making the worse the stronger argument.”
Next Socrates turns his attention to one of his accusers, Meletus. In the course of questioning Meletus, he gets Meletus to say that all people in Athens “educate and improve” the young while only Socrates “corrupts” them.
Socrates responds by saying, “It would be a very happy state of affairs if only one person corrupted our youth, while all others improved them.”
He argues that nobody wants to live among corrupt people, so if he is, indeed, corrupting the youth, what he requires is instruction and not punishment.
He then points out a contradiction in the indictment. He is accused of being an atheist. He is also accused of teaching “new spiritual things” instead of the accepted religion of Athens. He points out that he can’t be both an atheist and a believer in “new spiritual things” because spiritual things are immortal and therefore exist in the realm of the gods, so believing in “new spiritual” things but not believing in gods would be like beliving in flute playing but not flute players.
The Gadfly Defense
For me, the most interesting part of his defense is where he describes himself as gadfly. Like all gadflies, he despised, but in his case, he claims to be a useful gadfly. The state, he says, is like a great noble horse which is sluggish because of its size and needs to be “stirred up” by a gadfly. He is the gadfly who “stirs up” the sluggish horse.
“It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you all day long and whenever I find myself in your company.”
His accusers are swatting at him as if “aroused from a doze.” He says:
“You could easily kill me, and then you could sleep on for the rest of your days, unless the god, in his care for you sends you someone else.”
He reminds them about how, the one time he held public office, he spoke against the trial of the generals. What he describes sounds like mob rule:
“The trial was illegal, as you all recognized later. I was the only member of the presiding committee to oppose your doing something contrary to the laws, and I voted against it. The orators were ready to prosecute me and take me away, and your shouts were encouraging them. . . I might have been put to death had not the government fallen shortly afterward.”
He expains why he became a private citizen:
“Do you think I would have survived all these years if I were engaged in public affairs and acted as a good man must? Be sure, gentlemen of the jury, that if I attempted to take part in politics, I would have died long ago . . . no man will survive who genuinely opposes you.“
“No man will survive who genuinely opposes you” is a scorching statement to make about a democratic society, but not surprising if you’ve experienced the dynamics of group think or tried to put forward an opinion contrary to the accepted narrative of your group. Is a democracy really a democracy is everyone has to fall in line?
Socrates says this:
“I have lived as a private man and have never been anyone’s teacher. If anyone, young or old, desires to listen to me when I am talking and dealing with my own concerns, I have never begrudged this to anyone, but I do not converse when I receive a fee and not when I do not. I am equally ready to question the rich and the poor if anyone is willing to answer my questions. And I cannot justly be held responsible for the good or bad conduct of these people, as I never promised to teach them anything and have not done so.”
In other words, he says he should not be held responsible for what his followers and admirers do.
“Why then do some people enjoy spending considerable time in my company? You have heard why, gentlemen of the jury, I have told you the whole truth. They enjoy hearing those being questioned who think they are wise, but are not. And this is not unpleasant. To do this has, as I say, been enjoined upon me by the god, by means of oracles and dreams, and in every other way that a divine manifestation has ever ordered a man to do anything. This is true, gentlemen, and can easily be established.”
He also notes that none of the young men who followed him around are testifying against him. Many have grown to manhood, and surely at least one, after reaching maturity, would know that he had been corrupted. But none are stepping forward to be witnesses against him.
Socrates notes that he is not doing the usual thing when facing a jury:
“I am not begging and pleading and imploring the jury with many tears. I am not bringing family and friends to testify on my behalf.”
He explains why:
“I do not think it right to supplicate the jury and to be acquitted because of this but to teach and persuade them. It is not the purpose of a juryman’s office to give justice as a favor to whoever seems good to him, but to judge according to law, and this he has sworn to do. We should not accustom you to perjure yourselves, nor should you make a habit of it. This is irreverent conduct for either of us.”
Plato was one of Socrates’s young aristocratic followers. He witnessed the trial and later wrote his version of the defense Socrates offered.
The Subversive Element in a Democracy
Democracy — which allows for freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and the right to criticize the government — will always have a subversive element because there will always be people dissatisfied with the status quo. A democracy can never eliminate the subversive element because any government that attempts to police and stop all subversive behavior becomes a totalitarian state.
In 1960, the status quo was racial segregation and women in the home. Then along came a subversive element, which sounded something like this:
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin.’
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin.’
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin.’
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin.’
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.
(Confession: I recently watched A Complete Unknown, and that song got stuck in my head. So you’ll have to forgive me if I throw in a few more Bob Dylan lines.)
Bob Dylan’s, “The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind” suggests the aporia of many of Plato’s dialogues: The answer is there, but unknowable.
Before law school, I taught college English. (It feels like a previous lifetime!) I once taught a course in children’s literature, and what struck me was how much of children’s literature is subversive. Consider the story of a child who announces, “I am not going to get up today,” and remains in bed all day.
Or Mary Lennox, who disobeys the house rules, enters the secret garden where nobody is allowed to go, and helps her cousin disobey the (evil) doctor’s orders.
Or Toni Morrison’s story about a group of children who were put into a box because they used their freedom to break rules:
Who can forget Max, who makes lots of mischief and then becomes king of the wild things and leads the wild rumpus?
This poem is every two-year-old enjoying something that would horrify the parents:
I am sitting
In the middle
Of a rather
Muddy Puddle,
With my bottom
Full of bubbles
And my rubbers
Full of Mud,
While my jacket
And my sweater
Go on slowly
Getting wetter
As I very
Slowly settle
To the Bottom
Of the Mud.
And I find that
What a person
With a puddle
Round his middle
Thinks of mostly
In the muddle
Is the Muddi-
Ness of Mud.
The subversive element is curious, disobedient, and questioning. The subversive element tries new things and often gets into trouble. Sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes more overtly, the subversive element seeks to topple the established rules and order.
Subversiveness can have a great deal of appeal. It can also be frightening — depending on what is being subverted. Socrates was subversive. In his view, this was why he was on trial and executed. He also warned his judges against trying to eliminate the subversive element in a democracy.
Bob Dylan’s line, “the present now will later be past,” was prophetic. The counterculture of the 1960s became the mainstream culture in the twenty-first century. When the old social order changed and the counter-culture ideals became mainstream, a lot of people who, under the old order were first (privileged) found themselves having to compete for what was once handed to them. Lots of people either didn’t like the new order or they were afraid of it, and a new subversive element arose called MAGA that sought to turn back the clock. The “again” part of MAGA signifies a subversive, reactionary manifesto. There are those who remain confused why so many people voted for Trump despite his history of lawbreaking. The answer is obvious: They either like or overlook his rulebreaking because they dislike what he is trying to subvert.
Stabilizing the Subversive Element
The drafters of the United States Constitution — who were well-versed in the Greek classics — understood that democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction because, at any time, the people can choose to end the democracy. Specifically the founders feared that a demagogue, or a leader of the people, would lead the people to disaster.
The founders undersood the folly in selecting military generals by popular vote. They gave federal judges lifetime appointment on the theory that if judges didn’t have to worry about reelection or pleasing the people who keep them in power, they would be more likely to do what was right.
(At times, lifetime appointment for federal judges worked well for progressives. Racial segregation was overturned by the federal courts. When Thugood Marshall and his legal team set out on the 1930s to end racial segregation in America, they understood that elected officials, who answered to a white electorate, would never be able to embrace desegregation. In the 1950s and 1960s we had a liberal Supreme Court, partly becaues Franklin Delano Roosevelt served so long and appointed so many federal judges and Supreme Court justices. Through most of our history, the Supreme Court has been conservative, so lifetime appointment has more often benefited conservative politics.)
The drafters of the Constitution knew that Athenian democracy was unstable and ultimately failed. To create stability, they made change difficult. They made the Constitution difficult to amend. To create stability and slow down change, they divided power between three branches of government and between the states and the federal government.
The same safeguards they put into place to prevent a tyrant, should one come to power, from seizing too much power similarly work to slow down change.
Change is constant. We are currently in a backslide. Will we keep sliding back, will we push forward again?
I don’t know the answer because it depends on what people do. I do know that the people who have led us forward, the liberal heroes of the past, understood the dangers but kept cool heads, organized, and did the hard work of pushing us forward. Before the 1920s our country was not very democratic. College was only for a few. There was no minimum wage, no 40-hour workweek, no social security, and almost no worker protections. The middle class was relatively small. Most people in poverty could not break out. Many “owed their souls” to the company stores.
Then along came Franklin Delano Roosevelt with his New deal. Much of his success came from his ability to communicate calmly and clearly to the people. His New Deal enlarged middle class, reduced income inequality and in general made the country more democratic.
The safeguards that create stability means that bringing about change is hard work. Slow, difficult change is the price we pay for stability.
I know something about this because I wrote books about a few of our liberal heroes and how they made our country more democratic. They didn’t behave like demagogues stirring people to rage. They were not interested in popularity or fame. They were serious people who got to work and dedicated their lives to bringing about positive change. Each was subversive in that they worked to radically change the established social order.
And of course, 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns:
The world that Susan B. Anthony envisioned came about. Women are able to freely enter the professions. The world that Thurgood Marshall envisioned came about: Racial segregation in America has been outlawed. The world that Franklin Delano Roosevelt envisioned came about: Americans have social security, a minimum wage, a 40 hour workweek, and worker protections.
The result of those changes is that the federal government grew exponentially larger. The face of America changed and a lot of people don’t like it and are trying to subvert the new order.
To what extent will they succeed? “Will the loser now be later to win?”
The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.
Chapter 5
Do the People Want a King?
In an interesting passage from the biblical Book of Samuel (8:4) the Israelites wanted a king.
What happened was this: During the era after the death of Joshua, the ancient Israelites were ruled by a series of charismatic leaders often called “judges” but who were not actually judges in the legal sense. They were heroes and prophets upon whom rested “the spirit of God” and who led single tribes or groups of tribes to free Israel from what the Encyclopedia Judaica calls “periodic foreign oppression.”
Then one day, the Israelite elders approached Samuel, who was one such leader, and asked him to appoint a king so that the Israelites could be “like other nations.”
Samuel didn’t like it. Neither did God, who viewed the request for a king as a rejection. God told Samuel to warn the people against the dangers of a king, so Samuel said to the Israelites:
And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
Despite such harsh warnings, the Israelites said, “Nay; but we will have a king over us; That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.”
* * *
Exchanging Loyalty for Protection
Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) offered a theory of how government (as he knew it) evolved.
According to Hobbes, originally people lived in state of nature characterized by violence and fear. Because some people are predators who seek to dominate others, in a state of nature everyone lived in a constant state of preparedness for battle. Life in the natural state was “nasty, brutish, and short.” The state of nature was so mired in uncertainty and fear that there was no place for industry or innovation because “the fruit thereof is certain.” To illustrate that we naturally live in fear of each other, Hobbes offers the example that we lock our doors.
According to Hobbes, to escape the fear and uncertainty of life in a state of nature, people entered a “contract” and agreed to live under an absolute monarch in exchange for protection.
Doesn’t that sounds a bit like the arrangement the ancient Israelites wanted?
Aristotle famously said, “Man is a rational animal.” For Aristotle, people formed governments because it was the rational thing to do. Hobbes rejected this idea. For Hobbes, it was all about fear and the desire for protection. (At the time, Aristotle was the reigning authority in political philosophy, so coming right out and saying Aristotle was wrong took some chutzpah).
You might say that Hobbes was offering a theory for how feudalism developed in Europe in the early middle ages.
As Hobbes might tell the story, after the fall of the Roman empire when there was widespread chaos and fear of bandits and invaders, the people agreed to a contract: They would live under the rule of a nobleman or lord in exchange for protection. (Obviously the idea that people decide en masse to put themselves under the dominion of an overlord is far-fetched and Hobbes intended this as a sort of metaphor or explanation for how governments come to be.)
Hobbes was the first to talk about government as a social contract. As he understood the contract, the agreement was between the people, who decided among themselves to defer decisions to a single leader. The king was not bound by the contract and therefore had absolute power.
Poking holes in Hobbes’s theory is not difficult.
No doubt that after the fall of the Roman empire, there were people who were ruled by their fears and were happy to accept their positions as serfs in exchange for protection, but it seems to me just as likely that many serfs were coerced into servitude, and then their children were born into poverty and servitude. In other words, it’s possible that the first noblemen were the strongest warriors best equipped to protect the others. It’s also possible that the first overlords were just successful bandits.
Moreover, not all people or cultures end up trading life in the natural state for life under a king. For example, archaeologists tell us that in the absence of a strong central government on the North American continent, the indigenous people lived in democratic units and governed themselves.
“[Indigenous people] were governed through negotiations among clans. Clans were made of people from across society. Clan membership was inherited from mother to child. Clans were — and still are — the social glue holding these peoples together. . . Muscogee people have practiced democratic decision making in similar council houses for at least 1,500 years.”
To be fair, Hobbes didn’t have the benefit of the research of modern archeology or the means to study cultures around the world. He offered an explanation that accounted for what he knew: How powerful European kings eventually arose from the chaos after the Roman Empire collapsed.
By the time Hobbes was born, what had happened in Europe was that, over the centuries, the first overlords consolidated power. Kings — who became kings through various means including political maneuvering and a show of strength — defined their borders and united overlords in their service. These kings and overlords demanded loyalty from the serfs on the land. Yes, they offered protection in exchange for loyalty, but it seems to me that protecting their serfs was basically the same as protecting their own dominions.
Hereditary succession developed partly as a way to create stability. The nobleman claimed that his right to rule came from God and that his right to rule was passed to his heirs. As a result, people always knew who the king was, and (generally) who the next king would be. When a king died without heirs, chaos often ensued as those with a claim jockeyed for power.
The idea that the power of the kings came from God later became known as the divine rights of kings. Charles I of England claimed that, according to scripture, Adam was the first king and the kings and queens of England (and evidently all the European monarchs) were Adams’ direct descendents. (Yeah I know. It makes no sense, but it’s a good story if you want to secure the loyalty of the people by making them believe that God selected you to be the king.)
Remember when Socrates said that people in his ideal Republic must be tricked into doing what is in their best interest. They are told Big Lies to keep them in their places. Socrates was on to something about how rulers secure their power.
By claiming that monarchies began by means of a contract between the people, Hobbes essentially rejected the doctrine of the divine rights of kings. In fact, Hobbes believed people were equal, which was why in a state of nature there was chaos as people sought to protect their own interests.
Exchanging loyalty for protection is the bargain offered by today’s autocrats. The formula is to identify (or create) an enemy and then claim to be the person best equipped to defeat the enemy. The strongman offers to go out before the people and fight their battles. In exchange for protection, the people pledge their loyalty.
Given that Hobbes was advocating for absolute monarchy during an era when powerful kings and queens ruled Europe, you wouldn’t think his work would have aroused fury — but it did. According to Yale professor Steven Smith, “to the churchmen he seemed a godless atheist. To the monarchists, he was a dangerous skeptic and freethinker. To those who believed government should be more democratic, he was a defender of tyranny. (Hobbes, by the way, defined “tyranny” as “a ruler who you don’t like.”)
The Freedom to be Left Alone
In addition to being the first to talk about government as a social contract, Hobbes also redefined liberty in a way that still resonates for a lot of people.
Hobbes pointed out that the ancient Athenians living under a democracy viewed liberty, not as belonging to the individual, but belonging to the polity or democratic city. The Athenians believed themselves free because they were members of a democracy and thus ruled themselves. Hobbes didn’t think they had much personal freedom. For one thing, they were compelled to take part in government. “Democracy” literally means “rule by the people,” so, as the Athenians understood it, the people were required to perform the functions of government.
Imagine trying to compel people today to perform public services and actually run the government. Lots of people don’t even want to show up for jury duty. Millions don’t vote. Millions pay no attention to politics. They just want to be left alone.
Being compelled to perform government functions wasn’t all of it. Hobbes pointed out that the citizens were also compelled to obey whatever laws the majority agreed to pass. The phrase “tyranny of the majority” hadn’t yet been invented, but Hobbes alluded to the idea: Living under majority rule can result in injustice and tyranny if the majority agree to pass tyrannical laws. Modern critics of democracy describe it this way: Majority rule is the equivalent of two wolves and a sheep voting on the dinner menu.
For Hobbes, liberty and freedom belong to the individual, not the collective. For Hobbes, liberty means freedom from constraints and freedom to live your life as you please. He believed that a person was more likely to have greater personal liberty under an absolute sovereign, who was more likely to give people a zone in which they were free to act. Basically, if you don’t annoy the king, the king won’t annoy you — as long as you “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”
Hobbes also believed that kings needed to be popular and their interests were often aligned with the interests of the people, so people were more likely to get laws that benefitted them than, say, if a political party they despised gained control in a democracy. A sovereign, according to Hobbes, should govern for the benefit if all people, rich and poor. Because the majority will look out for their own best interests, Hobbes evidently thought this kind of fairness was more likely under an absolute sovereign.
Similarly, Hobbes believed that peace and social unity could be best achieved under the rule of a king who keeps peace and insures the common defense. In fact, he thought peace and harmony were more likely to be achieved if the king had absolute power over all things: the church, university curriculums, and everything.
Hobbes was probably right about one thing: The way to have stability and peace and end all outward strife and settle all arguments once and for all is for all people to agree to live under the absolute authority of a single person, who alone makes laws and judges those who break them, who decides which ideas have merit, and who approves all curriculums. If reducing strife and political conflict is the goal, absolute monarchy is the solution. If ending all strife and personal differences is the goal, totalitarianism is the solution.
Not everyone, though, wants to live in a world in which we all believe the same things, think the same things, and defer to a single authority.
Do People Today Want a King?
I suppose we can first ask, “Do people like democracy?” I suspect that a lot of people — even those who claim to like democracy — in fact, don’t.
People of Hobbes’s era often distrusted democracy because their models — the ancient Greek democracies and the Roman republic — failed, which didn’t bode well for democracy in general.
Scholars offer various reasons for why the Athenian democracy failed. Athens committed itself to unpopular wars — which it lost. The economy crashed, leading to domestic unrest. Leaders were accused of corruption. When Athenian democracy failed, it was initially replaced by an oligarchy, which gave way to the rise of Alexander the Great.
The Roman republic (a representative democracy) began in 509 BCE when the people of Rome replaced their monarchy with elected magistrates. The republic lasted almost five centuries until internal political turmoil pulled it apart. From the turmoil arose Julius Caesar, who made himself emperor.
Here are a few reasons people might not like the kind of democracy we have now:
- As I mentioned in the last blog post, slow, difficult change is the price we pay for stability. The slow pace can frustrate people. Autocracy, in contrast, is swift (“Off with her head!” said the Queen of Hearts.)
- Democratic institutions and agencies are created by — and run by — mere humans. Therefore, they will never work perfectly. Judges will get it wrong. Agencies will screw up. Laws will have unintended consequences. There will always be flaws in a democracy. Some people cannot tolerate imperfection so they reject the entire “system.”
- You won’t always get your way. In fact, if you are consistently in the voting minority, you may never get you way and you will end up living under a government not to your liking (or that you despise).
- There is a cacophony out there. People follow different religions, embrace different ideas of what America is and should be, and disagree about how America should be positioned internationally. The problem has been exacerbated by the rise of partisan cable news channels and Internet bubbles, which keep people who tune in or participate riled and fearful. (For what I mean, click here.) People who want harmony either settle into hermetically sealed bubbles with like-minded people or they avoid politics altogether.
What will the future bring? I don’t know. I only know that it will be different from the present. I began with the ancient Greek philosophers, so I will end with a quotation from Hereclitis: The only thing consant is change itself.