by Andrew Lynn
The just state is the just man writ large. Justice in this expanded political sense, then, embodies the understanding that everybody and everything has its appointed place and its appointed function: when the elements of the state are all in their proper place and doing the work that is proper for them to do, then we have justice. In the best states, as in the best souls, the rational element is in charge, and these are rule by the best or ‘aristocracy’; next comes timocracy (i.e. rule by a Spartan-type warrior caste), in which the spirited element is chief; then comes oligarchy, or rule by the wealthy, in which the desiring element, insofar as desires are necessary desires, has sway; thereafter we have democracy, which arises when the poor seize the reigns of state; and finally tyranny, when order and discipline have wholly broken down both in men’s souls and in the state. Within established states, justice takes the form of ‘the having and doing what is a man’s own, and belongs to him’, and is established when each class attends to what belongs to it and does its own work, and when members of each occupation do likewise. It is injustice, giving rise to great harm to the state, says Plato, when all intermeddle in each other’s proper sphere and none mind their own business—when a builder attempts a shoemaker’s work, for example, or a shoemaker a builder’s.
Plato’s concept of justice brings us back to the ‘rightness’ of having each of us, as far as possible, occupying the role and engaged in the work that is best for us and that allows us to exercise our highest faculties in service of the community as a whole. It is still possible for us to be inspired by this underlying vision of the just state, more than two millennia after the fact, when the core philosophy is presented shorn of its anachronisms and inessentials.
The specific features of Plato’s ideal state are more controversial. In the first place, it will be a caste-based society made up of three castes: guardians, soldiers, and common people. Caste and class-based societies are prone to the objection that the more ‘privileged’ castes or classes obtain an unfair and unjustified advantage which is often neither fair nor conducive to stable social relations. In Plato’s ideal state, however, there is a difference: the ruling elite constituted by the guardian caste is to be subject to expectations and restrictions that compensate for, and counterbalance, the privilege of rule. The guardians are to constitute a sophisticated warrior elite trained in culture and athletics.[1] They are to live together in a camp, sharing small houses and simple food, and having no private property beyond what is strictly necessary. Their marriage arrangements are to be organized by the state: brides and bridegrooms will be brought together seemingly by lot, but in fact pursuant to eugenic principles, so that the best parents produce the most offspring, with children being taken away at birth so that none know their own parents. And they are to be subject to the very strictest instruction and censorship: young guardians, for example, are to be taught to consider slavery worse than death, and they are to be kept well away from literary and other works that discourage decorum and temperance. The essential point here is that Plato’s ruling elite will be required to be properly shaped up for its role and properly constrained in its ability to extract private benefits from public office. We are, of course, entitled to turn away from the quasi-communism and eugenic programme advocated in the Republic. But that is not a basis for rejecting the much more important double proposition that we are right to have expectations of excellence of those who rule over us, and that we are right to subject those persons to the very strictest of codes of conduct.
There is much in Plato’s Republic that is idealistic, but the work also manifests an awareness of another point of view altogether in the enigmatic figure of Thrasymachus, one of Socrates’ several interlocutors. Thrasymachus is the great naysayer of the work: whereas Socrates is adamant that the just state is an unalloyed good and the just man the happiest, Thrasymachus contends for a wholly different and more cynical understanding of the matter. For, insists Thrasymachus, every government, from the democratic to the tyrannical, lays down laws for its own advantage, and punishes those who depart from them as law-breakers and unjust men. The conclusion, he suggests, is clear: justice is what is advantageous to the established government. Plato gives us to understand that Thrasymachus is bested in argument by Socrates, but it is hard to be convinced of this, and as a matter of both historical record and contemporary politics the argument of Thrasymachus has to a very considerable degree been borne out. Ultimately, the points of view of Socrates and Thrasymachus are not necessarily incompatible: true justice may, in principle, take the form that Socrates (through Plato) suggests, while at the same time what is given the name of ‘justice’ in particular states at particular times has, as a matter of fact, generally been whatever has been to the advantage of the incumbent regime. If anyone has had the last laugh, though, it must be Thrasymachus, since Plato’s politics are condemned nowadays precisely as a result of the fact that his elitism appears to be unjust from the point of view of the democratic states in which he is read.
Plato’s relevance today is not only in his portrayal of the ideal republic but also in his holding up a mirror to allow us to reflect upon our own political situation. For Plato in the Republic tempers his idealism with a sober-minded understanding that even if an ideal aristocratic state could anywhere be found or established, like all living things it would be subject to change and decay, first into a ‘timocracy’, next into oligarchy, then into a democracy, and finally into tyranny. Plato’s notion of ‘democracy’ does not, it must be said, coincide precisely with the modern representative or parliamentary democracies that take the name of democracy today, but the relation is close enough to be meaningful. Democracy, says Plato, has its own particular good—freedom—the insatiable desire for which brings about its own dissolution: anarchy finds its way into private houses, the young have no respect for the old and the old adopt the manners of the young, teachers fear and pander to their students, the non-citizen is put on an equal footing with the citizen, and in the end all chafe at authority, cease to care for the laws, and will tolerate no one above them. From this context emerges what Plato calls the class of ‘spendthrifts’ who mobilize the masses to squeeze the self-sufficient orderly class for a little ‘honey’, as Plato puts it, depriving those ‘squeezable persons’ of their estates and distributing them among the people, while making sure to reserve the larger part for themselves. From here arises the desire of revolution, and it is only a matter of time before a ‘protector’ of the people arises. And thus it is, foretells Plato, that tyranny takes root.
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Book VIII
Socrates-Glaucon
And so, Glaucon, we have arrived at the conclusion that in the perfect state wives and children are to be in common; and that all education and the pursuits of war and peace are also to be common, and the best philosophers and the bravest warriors are to be their kings?
That, replied Glaucon, has been acknowledged.
Yes, I said; and we have further acknowledged that the governors, when appointed themselves, will take their soldiers and place them in houses such as we were describing, which are common to all, and contain nothing private, or individual; and about their property, you remember what we agreed?
Yes, I remember that no one was to have any of the ordinary possessions of mankind; they were to be warrior athletes and guardians, receiving from the other citizens, in lieu of annual payment, only their maintenance, and they were to take care of themselves and of the whole state.
True, I said; and now that this division of our task is concluded, let us find the point at which we digressed, that we may return into the old path.
There is no difficulty in returning; you implied, then as now, that you had finished the description of the state: you said that such a state was good, and that the man was good who answered to it, although, as now appears, you had more excellent things to relate both of state and man. And you said further, that if this was the true form, then the others were false; and of the false forms, you
said, as I remember, that there were four principal ones, and that their defects, and the defects of the individuals corresponding to them, were worth examining. When we had seen all the individuals, and finally agreed as to who was the best and who was the worst of them, we were to consider whether the best was not also the happiest, and the worst the most miserable. I asked you what were the four forms of government of which you spoke, and then Polemarchus and Adeimantus put in their word; and you began again, and have found your way to the point at which we have now arrived.
Your recollection, I said, is most exact.
Then, like a wrestler, he replied, you must put yourself again in the same position; and let me ask the same questions, and do you give me the same answer which you were about to give me then.
Yes, if I can, I will, I said.
I shall particularly wish to hear what were the four constitutions of which you were speaking.
That question, I said, is easily answered: the four governments of which I spoke, so far as they have distinct names, are, first, those of Crete and Sparta, which are generally applauded; what is termed oligarchy comes next; this is not equally approved, and is a form of government which teems with evils; thirdly, democracy, which naturally follows oligarchy, although very different; and lastly comes tyranny, great and famous, which differs from them all, and is the fourth and worst disorder of a state. I do not know, do you? of any other constitution which can be said to have a distinct character. There are lordships and principalities which are bought and sold, and some other intermediate forms of government. But these are nondescripts and may be found equally among Hellenes and among barbarians.
Yes, he replied, we certainly hear of many curious forms of government which exist among them.
Do you know, I said, that governments vary as the dispositions of men vary, and that there must be as many of the one as there are of the other? For we cannot suppose that states are made of ‘oak and rock,’ and not out of the human natures which are in them, and which in a figure turn the scale and draw other things after them?
Yes, he said, the states are as the men are; they grow out of human characters.
Then if the constitutions of states are five, the dispositions of individual minds will also be five?
Certainly.
Socrates-Adeimantus
…Again, let us see how the democratical man grows out of the oligarchical: the following, as I suspect, is commonly the process.
What is the process?
When a young man who has been brought up as we were just now describing, in a vulgar and miserly way, has tasted drones’ honey and has come to associate with fierce and crafty natures who are able to provide for him all sorts of refinements and varieties of pleasure—then, as you may imagine, the change will begin of the oligarchical principle within him into the democratical?
Inevitably.
And as in the city like was helping like, and the change was effected by an alliance from without assisting one division of the citizens, so too the young man is changed by a class of desires coming from without to assist the desires within him, that which is akin and alike again helping that which is akin and alike?
Certainly.
And if there be any ally which aids the oligarchical principle within him, whether the influence of a father or of kindred, advising or rebuking him, then there arises in his soul a faction and an opposite faction, and he goes to war with himself.
It must be so.
And there are times when the democratical principle gives way to the oligarchical, and some of his desires die, and others are banished; a spirit of reverence enters into the young man’s soul and order is restored.
Yes, he said, that sometimes happens.
And then, again, after the old desires have been driven out, fresh ones spring up, which are akin to them, and because he, their father, does not know how to educate them, wax fierce and numerous.
Yes, he said, that is apt to be the way.
They draw him to his old associates, and holding secret intercourse with them, breed and multiply in him.
Very true.
At length they seize upon the citadel of the young man’s soul, which they perceive to be void of all accomplishments and fair pursuits and true words, which make their abode in the minds of men who are dear to the gods, and are their best guardians and sentinels.
None better.
False and boastful conceits and phrases mount upwards and take their place.
They are certain to do so.
And so the young man returns into the country of the lotus-eaters, and takes up his dwelling there in the face of all men; and if any help be sent by his friends to the oligarchical part of him, the aforesaid vain conceits shut the gate of the king’s fastness; and they will neither allow the embassy itself to enter, nor if private advisers offer the fatherly counsel of the aged will they listen to them or receive them. There is a battle and they gain the day, and then modesty, which they call silliness, is ignominiously thrust into exile by them, and temperance, which they nickname unmanliness, is trampled in the mire and cast forth; they persuade men that moderation and orderly expenditure are vulgarity and meanness, and so, by the help of a rabble of evil appetites, they drive them beyond the border.
Yes, with a will.
And when they have emptied and swept clean the soul of him who is now in their power and who is being initiated by them in great mysteries, the next thing is to bring back to their house insolence and anarchy and waste and impudence in bright array having garlands on their heads, and a great company with them, hymning their praises and calling them by sweet names; insolence they term breeding, and anarchy liberty, and waste magnificence, and impudence courage. And so the young man passes out of his original nature, which was trained in the school of necessity, into the freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary pleasures.
Yes, he said, the change in him is visible enough.
After this he lives on, spending his money and labour and time on unnecessary pleasures quite as much as on necessary ones; but if he be fortunate, and is not too much disordered in his wits, when years have elapsed, and the heyday of passion is over—supposing that he then re-admits into the city some part of the exiled virtues, and does not wholly give himself up to their successors—in that case he balances his pleasures and lives in a sort of equilibrium, putting the government of himself into the hands of the one which comes first and wins the turn; and when he has had enough of that, then into the hands of another; he despises none of them but encourages them all equally.
Very true, he said.
Neither does he receive or let pass into the fortress any true word of advice; if anyone says to him that some pleasures are the satisfactions of good and noble desires, and others of evil desires, and that he ought to use and honour some and chastise and master the others—whenever this is repeated to him he shakes his head and says that they are all alike, and that one is as good as another.
Yes, he said; that is the way with him.
Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of anyone who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.
Yes, he replied, he is all liberty and equality.
Yes, I said; his life is motley and manifold and an epitome of the lives of many—he answers to the state which we described as fair and spangled. And many a man and many a woman will take him for their pattern, and many a constitution and many an example of manners is contained in him.
Just so.
Let that be his place, he said.
Last of all comes the most beautiful of all, man and state alike, tyranny and the tyrant; these we have now to consider.
Quite true, he said.
Say then, my friend, in what manner does tyranny arise? That it has a democratic origin is evident.
Clearly.
And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as democracy from oligarchy—I mean, after a sort?
How?
The good which oligarchy proposed to itself and the means by which it was maintained was excess of wealth—am I not right?
Yes.
And the insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of all other things for the sake of money-getting was also the ruin of oligarchy?
True.
And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution?
What good?
Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory of the state—and that therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.
Yes; the saying is in everybody’s mouth.
I was going to observe that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.
How so?
When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cupbearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed oligarchs.
