The Outlines of the City (Part 3)
Values and Ideals. Or: The Impossibility of the Philosopher King
I originally wrote this series as a single essay for a class on The City and Man, taught by Heinrich Meier. He responded by assuring me that I had missed something significant, and directed me to the following passages: Aristotle’s Politics ¶ 15, Plato’s Republic ¶ 67 and ¶ 78, and Thucydides’ Peloponessian War ¶ 17. So, I revisited these sections and will discuss what I found.
The City and Man is structured so that the reader is taken back in time, from Aristotle to Plato to Thucydides. The effect is that the reader, led by Strauss, uncovers more and more of the ground level of politics and philosophy. He is able to see what is underneath or primary. I will follow this trajectory with the sections above, but will ultimately build a model that is best seen in the opposite direction and will therefore end with a recap in reverse. So, come along! It’ll be fun, and we’ll learn something worthwhile.
Aristotle’s Politics ¶ 15
“When the philosopher Aristotle addresses his political science to more or less the perfect gentlemen, he shows them as far as possible that the way of life of the perfect gentle points toward the philosophic way of life; he removes a screen. He articulates for his addressees the unwritten nomos which was the limit of their vision while he himself stands above that limit. He must speak of virtues and vices which were “nameless” and hence hitherto unknown. He must deny explicitly or tacitly that habits as highly praised as a sense of shame and piety are virtues. The gentleman is by nature able to be affected by philosophy; Aristotle’s political science is an attempt to actualize this potentiality. The gentleman affected by philosophy is in the highest case the enlightened statesman, like Pericles who was affected by Anaxagoras.”
Right away we establish the throughpoint with which we will follow the major lesson of these passages: Aristotle, the philosopher, must direct his teaching to a non-philosopher (or, rather, a partial philosopher)—the gentlemen, who can be affected by philosophy but still live the political life. The gentlemen act as a bridge from philosophy to politics, from the escapees to the cave-dwellers.
…
“The moral-political sphere is then not unqualifiedly closed to theoretical science. One reason why it seemed necesarry to make a radical distinction between practical wisdom on one hand and the arts and the sciences on the other was the fact that every art is concerned with the partial good, whereas prudence is concerned with the whole human good.”
Notice that he uses practical wisdom and prudence interchangably
“Yet the highest form of prudence is the legislative art which is the architectonic art, the art of arts, because it deals with the whole human good in the most comprehensive manner. It is concerned with the whole human good by being concerned with the highest human good with reference to which all partial human goods are good. It deals with its subject in the most comprehensive manner because it establishes the framework within which political prudence proper, the right handling of situations, can take place.
This bridge—the gentlemen—opens the door for political science, a science of the whole human good.
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“Political life is life in the cave which is partly closed off by a wall from life in the light of the sun; the city is the only whole within the whole or the only part of the whole essence can be wholly known. In spite of their disagreement Plato and Aristotle agree as to this, that the city is both closed to the whole and open to the whole, and they are agreed as to the character of the wall separating the city from the rest of the whole.”
They agree as the character of the wall separating the city from the rest of the whole. But what is the character of the wall?
“Given the fact that the only political work proper of Plato is the Laws in which Socrates does not occur, one is tempted to draw this conclusion: the only reason why not Socrates but Aristotle became the found of political science is that Socrates who spent his life in the unending ascent to the idea of the good and in awakening others to that ascent, lacked for this reason the leisure not only for political activity but even for founding political science.”
So, LS proposes a marked difference between Socrates and Aristotle in that Socrates “spent his life in the unending ascent to the idea of the good and in awakening others to that ascent,” and thereby “lacked for this reason the leisure not only for political activity.”
Aristotle took the leisure to found political science (which we have defined here as teaching the gentlemen something of the whole human good and allowing him to rule prudently), and—of course—was then not killed by the city as Socrates was.
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So, we begin with the following discovery: The philosopher requires an intermediary to govern in a way that recognizes the good. Neglecting this responsibility results in the persecution of the philosopher in the manner of the trial of Socrates. The philosopher requires the absence of persecution so that he may pursue the good and awaken others to this pursuit. The necesarry intermediary is the gentlemen, and political science is founded so that the gentlemen can help society to recongnize the good and not persecute those who pursue it.
Plato’s Republic ¶ 67
The question remains: “Why are the philosophers unwilling to rule?”
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“Being dominated by the desire, the eros, for knowledge as the one thing needful, or knowing that philosophy is the most pleasant and blessed possession, the philosophers have no leisure for looking down at human affairs, let alone for taking care of them. They believe that while still alive they are already firmly settled far away from their cities in the “Islands of the Blessed.” Hence only compulsion could induce them to take part in public life in the just city, i.e. in the city which regards the proper upbringing of philosophers as its most important task.”
The philosophers are not even willing if the city prioritizes bringing up philosophers
One may initially regard this as some sort of anti-social illness and claim the philosophers become so self-consumed that they cannot share what they learn. Yet, they do teach. But only to a select few that are capable of receiving their lessons.
“Having perceived the truly grand, the philosophers regard the human things as paltry. Their very justice—their abstaining from wronging their fellow human beings—flows from contempt for the things which the non-philosophers hotly contest. They know that the life not dedicated to philosophers and therefore even the poltical life at its best is like life in a cave, so much so that the city can be identified with the Cave. The cave-dwellers, i.e. the non-philosophers, see only the shadows of artifacts (514b-515c). That is to say, whatever they perceive they understand in the light of opinions sanctified by the fiat of legislators, regarding the just and noble things, i.e. of fabricated or conventional opinions, and they do not know that these their most cherished convictions possess no higher status than that of opinions. For if even the best city stands or falls by a fundamental falsehood, albeit a noble falsehood, it can be expected that the opinions on which the imperfect cities rest or in which they believe will not be ture, to say the least.”
Here it is: All cities are necessarily built on imperfect ideals, and therefore hold some sacred falsities. This is because, unlike the Philosopher, the city is not capable of seeing truth in its fullest. Governing, then, would require the philosopher to sacrifice his access to the ultimate truth in favor of the sacred untruths of the city. A sacrifice few (or no) philosophers are willing to make.
“Precisely the best of the non-philosophers, the good citizens, are passionately attached to these opinions and therefore passionately opposed to philosophy (517a) which is the attempt to go beyond opinion toward knowledge: the multitiude is not as persuadable by the philosophers as we sanguinely assumed in an earlier part of the argument. This is the true reason why the coincidence of philosophy and political power is extremely improbable: philosophy and the city tend away from one another in opposite directions.”
The best of the citizens, i.e. those who are most true to the city's ideals, will necessarily be antagonistic to the philosophers, who reject the city's opinions in favor of the truth.
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So, we now see why the Philosopher King is not a stable solution: The philosophers will not govern! They will not govern because the truths they have seen cannot be communicated properly to the masses, and will even be actively opposed by the best of citizens. It is for these reasons why an intermediary (the gentlemen) is necessary.
Plato’s Republic ¶ 78
“The Republic ends with a discussion of the greatest rewards for justice and the greatest punishments for injustice. The discussion consists of three parts: (1) proof of the immortality of the soul; (2) the divine and human rewards and punishments while man is alive; (3) the rewards and punishments after death. The central part is silent about philosophy: rewards for justice and punishments for injustice during life are needed for the non-philosophers whose justice does not have the intrinsic attractiveness which the justice peculiar to the philosopher has.”
“No one who has understood the dual meaning of justice can fail to see the necessity of Socrates “Philistine" utterance on the earthly rewards which the just, generaly speaking, receive (613d, c4). Socrates, who knew Glaucon, is a better judge of what is good for Glaucon than any reader of the Republic, and surely than the modern "idealists'' who shudder in a thoroughly unmanly way at the thought that men who are pillars of a stable society through their uprightness, which indeed must not be entirely divorced from ability or artfulness, are likely to be rewarded by their society.”
Here we see the details of the relationship between the philosopher (Socrates) and the gentleman (Glaucon). As the gentleman struggles to see the intrinsic attractiveness of true justice, the philosopher must point toward the extrinsic rewards of such justice.
“This thought is an indispensable corrective to Glaucon's exaggerated statement in his long speech about the extreme sufferings of the genuinely just man: Glaucon could not have known what a genuinely just man is. It cannot be the duty of a genuinely just man like Socrates to drive weaker men to despair of the possibility of some order and decency in human affairs, and least of all those who, by virtue of their inclinations, their descent, and their abilities, may have some public responsibility.”
Thucydides Peloponnesian War ¶ 17
“All this is in accordance with our first impression according to which Thucydides' horizon is the horizon of the city. Every human being and every society is what it is by virtue of the highest to which it looks up. The city, if it is healthy, looks up, not to the laws which it can unmake as it made them, but to the unwritten laws, the divine law, the gods of the city. The city must transcend itself.”
We now begin to see what the leaders of the city must look up toward. In the absence of philosophers, it is something like divine law or piety.
“The city can disregard the divine law; it can become guilty of hybris by deed and by speech: the Funeral Speech is followed by the plague, and the dialogue with the Melians is followed by the disaster in Sicily. This would seem to be the most comprehensive instruction which Thucydides silently conveys, the silent character of the conveyance being required by the chaste character of his piety.”
It would *seem* that Thucydides claims there are consequences to hybris or transgressing divine law.
“If this is so, we shall cease to wonder why he is so silent about economic and cultural matters. Such matters were less important to him than, for instance, which army was in the possession of the battlefield after a battle; this was ultimately due to the fact that burial of one's dead is a most sacred duty; the army which had to abandon the battlefield was compelled to ask the enemy for permission to gather their dead and thus formally to concede defeat; this was a further reason why possession of the battlefield was so important.”
I.e., it is more important to Thucydides that one has the ability to perform necessary functions in line with the unwritten laws than to laws regarding money or culture.
“When Thucydides fails to mention "the doubling or tripling of the tribute [of Athens' alies] in 425"—”the most notable omission in his narrative" from the point of view of the modern historian—this may well be due to the fact that for Thucydides and for the cities, the payment of tribute as such, i.e. impairment of freedom, was much more important than the amount of the tribute; what is most important for the city is its freedom, the freedom endangered by the tyrant city of Athens: Sparta did not impose tribute on her allies but only her regime so favorable to stable freedom or an approximation to her regime (I 19).”
“The general conclusion which we have drawn from Thucydides' explicit statements surely goes beyond these statements: we shall have to reconsider, in the light of the evidence supplied especially by his silence, our tentative suggestion as to what in his view transcends the city. Wherever that reconsideration will lead us, it cannot make us doubt the fact that the most important consideration concerns that which transcends the city or which is higher than the city; it does not concern things which are simply subordinate to the city.”
It is unclear whether Thucydides believes in divine law. It is not unclear, however, that something is needed as an ideal for the city.
In Sum:
As I stated earlier, the full lesson here is more easily seen in the natural chronological order which progresses from Thucydides to Plato to Aristotle. In Thucydides we first see the need for the ideal, and the absence of clarity in that ideal without the philosopher. The pious gentlemen—poor Nicias in the Athenian case—are incapable of properly discerning the truth and pay dearly for it. There needs to be a person who’s sole job it is to uncover the truth. There needs to be a philosopher.
If the leaders of the city (the gentlemen) follow the philosopher, and the philosopher looks up to the ideas—to truth itself, the truth itself can act as an ideal, although it is deluded as it works down the line from idea to philosopher to gentleman to city (consider a game of telephone). But this is better than misguided attempts to interpret divinity, as Nicias and soldiers discover.
In Plato, we encounter the possibility of philosopher rule directly, but quickly find it is untenable. The philosophers, having seen the light, will not be forced back into the cave. Aristotle, internalizing this fact, acknowledges that the philosophers require an intermediary to direct the City. This intermediary is the gentlemen, and with this acknowledgement political science is born. One may note that Aristotle’s most famous pupil is not a philosopher but a king—that is, Alexander the Great. One may even say it was Alexander who first brought this chain to completion as he spread Greekness throughout Europe and Asia.
