Ancient Greek Political Thought Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Ancient Greek political theory originally centered on the polis, the distinctive Greek city-state. Greece is naturally divided into relatively small, self-contained territories, many of which are islands in the Aegean Sea. Each area formed its own politically independent society, the polis. The polis was generally viewed as a moral union. Its educational function was to raise its citizens to the conception of virtue embodied in its laws or customs. The Greek word nomos (plural, nomoi) means both “laws” and “customs,” which by traditions were divinely rooted. The small size of Greek communities allowed many to develop direct democracies and so to give rise to the Greek ideal of ruling and being ruled in turn as one of the highest forms of human life.

Because of the centrality of the polis, when Greece was conquered by Macedon, in the late fourth century BCE, and the no longer autonomous polis ceased to be the center of existence, Greek political theory underwent a fundamental shift. The Hellenistic period (in contrast to the earlier “Hellenic”) dates from the loss of Greek independence. The date conventionally used is the death of Alexander the Great (323

BCE). The term Hellenistic is from the Greek hellenizein, to speak Greek. The conquests of Alexander united much of the Mediterranean world in large political units or empires. This area literally began to speak Greek, as Greek culture spread throughout this overall region, and moral and political theorizing was carried on by the great Hellenistic schools, the Stoics and the Epicureans.

Hellenic political theory, epitomized in works of Plato and Aristotle, provides conceptions of the relationship between the individual and society sharply different from those of contemporary Western views. While the liberal tradition conceptualizes the individual apart from society, endowed with rights that are not granted by society, the Greeks integrated the individual much more into society. As classically argued in Aristotle’s Politics, the polis is “prior to” the individual. Because he can achieve full development only as a member of a polis, a man is a “political animal.” Remove a person from the polis, and he is no longer really a person, as a pawn removed from a chess set is no longer a pawn but simply a piece of wood.

Degrees of individualism varied in different societies. Commercial, democratic Athens had a thriving culture, with individuals—only adult male citizens—given a certain degree of freedom to live as they pleased. On the opposite pole was highly militarized Spartan society, which devoted enormous efforts to turning its citizens into indomitable soldiers. In Sparta, children were taken from their families at the age of five or six to be raised and educated communally under harsh conditions that would ensure toughness. Citizens had plots of land, farmed by helots—essentially serfs—while they devoted themselves to military training. Commerce was minimal, and gold and silver forbidden. Meals were eaten at common tables, while the state intruded into family life in many other ways. As a result of this system, Spartans were famous throughout Greece for their bravery and their willingness to place the interests of their community before their own. Plato and Aristotle, the greatest Greek political theorists, were from upper-class backgrounds. Highly critical of extreme democracy, they were attracted to Sparta and its ideal of state-inculcated virtue. The influence of Sparta is apparent in Plato’s Republic and Laws. Especially as described in Plutarch’s life of Lycurgus, Sparta has epitomized a virtuous society ever since.

Beginnings

The tradition of Western political theory began in ancient Greece. An impulse similar to that which led early philosophers such as Thales and Anaximander to inquire into the nature of the universe led other thinkers to raise questions about the nature of political association and the laws and customs of societies. One factor prompting questions about the nature and status of nomoi was contact with other societies, which led to the discovery that many Greek norms differed from those of other peoples. A common effect of such contact was moral relativism, a belief that nomoi rested solely on convention. Traditional Greek norms of justice required not oppressing the downtrodden, as commanded by the gods. But these claims were called into question by relativism. A sophisticated relativistic position was advanced by Protagoras of Abdera, perhaps the greatest of the Sophists, itinerant Greek teachers of rhetoric and other arts, who played an important role in the development of democracy. Protagoras declared that “man is the measure of all things” and doubted our ability to know about the gods because of the difficulty of the subject combined with the shortness of human life. In regard to standards of proper conduct, Protagoras argued that there is no truth beyond social conventions, and so one should adapt to those of one’s society.

But other thinkers searched for moral norms rooted in something more substantial than convention and so opposed “nature” (physis) to nomos. The Sophist Antiphon argued that the only sanction of human norms was fear of punishment, while by nature, every creature seeks its own advantage. Therefore we should adhere to social norms only for fear of being caught; if we can break the rules undetected, we should do so. An alternative to the traditional view of justice was visible in the animal kingdom, and so thinkers argued for the naturalness of the law of the jungle. A full-fledged immoralist doctrine is expressed by Callicles, a probably fictional character in Plato’s Gorgias. What we regard as rules of justice were devised by the weak to prevent the strong from oppressing them. Genuine moral standards require that the strong allow their natural tendencies to be unleashed. They should subordinate the weak and have more—have large appetites and the ability to satisfy them. The first occurrence of the phrase “law of nature (nomon . . . ton tês physeôs)” in Greek prose occurs in a one of Callicles’ speeches in the Gorgias.

Evidence of the influence of such views is found in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. As presented by Thucydides, figures on both sides of the conflict defend their objectives with norms of power politics. This attitude reaches its peak in a dialogue Thucydides recounts between representatives of Athens and of the island of Melos. The Athenians demand that the Melians submit to them and so forfeit their independence, supporting their position by appeal to the rule that everyone recognizes in such cases: The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.

Socrates And Plato

Countering relativism—not only moral but epistemological— was central to Socrates’ philosophical endeavors and to the mission of moral reform to which he devoted his life. According to Plato, Socrates claimed to be ignorant, not to possess the all-important moral knowledge he sought. However, he was superior to other Athenians in recognizing his own ignorance and so knowing that he should seek it. Socrates therefore attempted to waken his fellow citizens to their ignorance, so they would join his search. Although Socrates was similar to the Sophists in various ways, he broke with them in believing in somewhat traditional rules of justice. More than this, he claimed that justice is both necessary and sufficient for happiness. In the Gorgias, Plato has him argue that to do wrong (adikein) is worse than to suffer wrong (adikeisthai), because wrongdoing damages one’s soul. Socrates himself steadfastly refused to do anything he viewed as wrong, and so he allowed himself to be executed rather than commit the injustice of escaping from prison.

Although Socrates apparently did not develop a systematic political philosophy and, as an exclusively oral teacher, did not produce a conventional body of philosophical works, he did have important political views. His faith in the power of knowledge found expression in sharp criticism of Athenian democracy, because its method of distributing political offices through a lottery system turned over important matters of state to people unqualified to deal with them. Socrates also criticized democracy, because the people were volatile and easily swayed by emotion. This is one reason he avoided public life, approaching his fellow citizens in a private capacity, like a father or an elder brother. On one occasion when he served in the Athenian Council, he unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the assembly from taking a popular but clearly illegal action, at considerable risk to himself.

Greek political theory achieved its culmination in the works of Plato and Aristotle. In his autobiographical Seventh Epistle, Plato describes his desire to enter politics as a young man but how he was disillusioned by successive regimes he viewed as unjust in the closing years of the Peloponnesian War. In this epistle, Plato claims that, given the corruption of existing societies, the only possible good society is one that combines political power and wisdom, and so in which philosophers rule as kings. The overall pattern for Plato’s political theory is visible here. He was sharply critical of Athenian democracy, and throughout his life, he proposed different alternatives in which the polis would return to its traditional role of educating citizens to make them as virtuous as possible.

Irresolvable problems of interpretation follow from Plato’s use of the dialogue form, with Socrates generally as his main spokesman. The “Socratic problem” is the problem of distinguishing between Plato’s representation of the historical Socrates and his use of Socrates as a spokesman for his own ideas. The influence of Socrates appears most strong in Plato’s early works, many of which end in puzzlement or aporia. Following the pattern of the historical Socrates, the Socrates of these dialogues raises questions about the nature of moral knowledge, and he is frequently depicted as unsuccessfully attempting to define different virtues. These dialogues also develop Socrates’ criticisms of democracy. An especially bitter denunciation is presented in the Gorgias, which examines rhetoric through Socrates’ questioning of Gorgias, a famous teacher of this art. Socrates unmasks rhetoric as a kind of pandering. It is an art of telling people what they want to hear, rather than what is good for them, and works only because they are too ignorant to understand their real interests. In a contest before a jury of children, the physician who tells people unpleasant truths will always lose to the rhetor, who offers them sweets. Much admired politicians—Miltiades, Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles—were successful because they catered to people’s appetites. The results of their efforts are a city that is corrupt and swollen, stuffed with harbors and arsenals and similar trash.

Plato’s search for securely rooted moral standards is combined with his criticism of existing political systems in the Republic. In the course of attempting to provide a definition of justice and to counter a series of immoralist claims for injustice, Socrates constructs a just city to enable himself and his interlocutors to observe justice on a large scale. The city is divided into three classes: Philosophers who rule are supported by auxiliaries, who are the city’s fighting force, and the third class is farmers or craftsmen, who make up the bulk of the population. The rulers and auxiliaries constitute the Guardians. Plato’s main argument for the superiority of justice to injustice is based on an elaborate analogy between cities and souls, which, he argues, have corresponding parts and corresponding virtues, which depend on relationships between the parts. Justice is a condition in which each part fulfills its proper function. The superiority of justice to injustice is proved by contrasting the harmonious just city and its corresponding soul with forms of unjust cities and their corresponding souls. The unjust forms are ridden with conflict and faction, and so they are clearly inferior to the just city and soul.

Plato’s political theory is single-minded. The purpose of the city is to promote virtue—balance and harmony in the soul, which requires that the philosophers control the environment and shape the entire city to this end. Because of the recalcitrance of appetite and Plato’s belief that people are most susceptible to conditioning when they are very young, the just city is dedicated to lifelong education—although whether for Guardians alone or all citizens is a question on which scholarly opinion is divided.

Plato believes strongly in the psychological power of art and so devotes a great deal of the Republic to detailed criticism of poetry, which at that time was the chief Greek artistic medium, especially that of Homer. Because most people are not able to master their appetites themselves, they must be subjected to philosophic rule—“enslaved to the philosophers,” though this form of “slavery” is for their own benefit.

For the two classes of Guardians, the rulers and auxiliaries, Plato introduces distinctive institutions of community of family and of property, which are intended to ensure the Guardians’ undivided loyalty to the city and to eliminate sources of conflict between them. According to Plato, philosophers alone are qualified to rule, not only because of their superior knowledge, but because of the elevation of values that accompanies the acquisition of knowledge, the ordinary temptations of ruling hold no attraction for them. They rule only out of duty to the city, and as an alternative to being ruled by people inferior to themselves. One of Plato’s striking innovations is to have the Guardians include women as well as men. And so his commitment to “philosopher-kings” is, strictly speaking, a misnomer. But in spite of the fact that Plato was undoubtedly a pioneer in regard to women’s equality, this was limited to superior women who would qualify as Guardians. Traditional families are maintained outside of the Guardian class.

In the years following the Republic, Plato apparently lost faith in the possibility of philosopher-kings and the unchecked political authority their existence allowed. In his later works, the Statesman and, especially, his last work, the Laws, he appears to reject outright the idea of rulers with superhuman qualities. He retains his central commitment to educative states but is far more reliant on traditional institutions, especially the rule of law. In the Laws, Plato’s attention to education is arguably more extreme than in the Republic. He argues that, in order to successfully educate someone, the process must begin before birth. Pregnant women should perform rhythmic exercises to instill rhythm and harmony in the souls of future citizens.

The ideal city in the Laws is a colony to be founded in Crete. The Athenian Stranger, the work’s main spokesman—Socrates is absent from the Laws—proposes a detailed system of government, modeled on Athenian democracy but with extreme democratic elements modified. There is an elaborate system of institutions that includes numerous checks and balances, and a social system, modeled on Sparta, that deemphasizes the role of wealth. The tedious detail of Plato’s construction somewhat disguises the vast knowledge of Greek history and institutions and ingenious attempts at reform that went into his designs.

Aristotle

Although Aristotle was Plato’s student for twenty years, he broke from the high idealism of the Republic—although less so from the Laws, which Plato was probably writing during the time Aristotle was at the academy. Aristotle’s ethical teaching is clearly indebted to Plato, as is evident in his interest in psychic balance and harmony, achieved through lengthy habituation and conditioning. Aristotle viewed “ethics” and “politics” as a single subject, and in his corpus, the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics form a continuous treatise. The connection lies in the fact that the virtue Aristotle explores requires that the subject be raised in a properly governed polis.

Subjects examined in the Politics range from the best imaginable polis, to the best that could be constructed under particular conditions, to existing political forms and measures that would make them more stable. Aristotle’s argument that man is a political animal is found in Book I. In Book II, he examines ideal states in theory and practice, including a series of harsh—although frequently mistaken—criticisms of Plato’s Republic and Laws, generally in regard to what he views as those works’ excessive utopianism. But then, paradoxically, in Books VII and VIII, Aristotle presents an ideal state of his own, which is clearly modeled on the Laws.

The bulk of the Politics is a detailed examination of numerous Greek cities and their political forms. In composing the work, Aristotle drew upon studies of 158 different Greek constitutions—one of which, a book-length study of the Constitution of Athens by either Aristotle or his students—is extant. Aristotle shows clear mastery of the history and workings of different democracies, oligarchies, and tyrannies, and he discusses numerous instances of each. His analysis of causes of stability and instability emphasizes economic elements, although not exclusively. Democracy, which is rule of the poor over the rich, becomes unstable as the rule of the poor becomes extreme. Oligarchy, rule of the rich, becomes unstable with extreme rule by the rich. In general, in order to make these cities more stable, one should counter tendencies toward extremism. In Book IV, Aristotle presents a relative ideal, the best city one may realistically hope for, in rule by the middle class, which is the most stable state. Connections that Aristotle draws between rule by the middle class and political stability have been largely confirmed by subsequent history, including conditions in contemporary industrial democracies.

Hellenistic Period

With the Macedonian conquests, the formerly autonomous polis became an administrative unit in a much larger political form. Political activity retreated from the center of human life, and the Greek conception of a citizen became more passive. The free citizen was no longer self-governing but was relatively free of direct domination by others. Important commentators argue that the gap between Hellenic and Hellenistic views is one of the largest in the history of Western political thought.

With political affairs in the ordinary sense largely removed from most people’s lives, Hellenistic political theory has little direct political content. In regard to moral philosophy, the Hellenistic schools provided philosophies of life, helping individuals to bear up during this troubled period. The Stoics preached the imperturbability of the wise person; the Epicureans preached peace of mind, and similar attitudes were upheld by other schools.

The Stoics were the most influential Hellenistic philosophical school. Believing in moral norms rooted in nature and accessible through reason, they developed the conception of natural law that was central to subsequent political theory for 2,000 years. As moral laws were rooted in nature, so was society. The Stoics viewed people as driven to enter society because of natural urges. A watered down form of Stoicism attained enormous influence from the second century BCE onward, as perhaps the most influential philosophy of the Roman Republic and then empire. When Christianity arose in the Roman Empire, it was largely lacking in social and political philosophy and so adapted dominant ideas of the times. Through Christianity, aspects of Stoicism were passed on to the modern world.

The Epicureans were less influential than the Stoics, and they opposed the Stoics on basic doctrines. Materialists, the Epicureans believed the universe was matter in motion, combining and recombining entirely by chance. In their view, neither moral norms nor society itself is rooted in nature. Rather, these are constructed by people seeking advantage in terms of pleasure and pain. Society comes about because people agree to live together, while rules of justice are purely conventional, practiced because of their utility.While the Stoics’ influence is apparent in the subsequent natural law tradition, the Epicureans lived on in the materialism and social contract theory of Thomas Hobbes and later doctrines of the conventional nature of justice.

Bibliography:

The Complete Works of Aristotle:The Revised Oxford Translation. 2 vols. Edited by J. Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Guthrie,W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy. 6 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962–1981.
Klosko, George. History of Political Theory: An Introduction.Vol. I: Ancient and Medieval Political Theory. Fort Worth,Tex.: Harcourt Brace, 1993.
Complete Works. Edited by J. Cooper. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1997.
Rowe, Christopher, and Malcolm Schofield, eds. The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
History of the Peloponnesian War. Rev. ed. Edited by M. I. Finley. Translated by R.Warner. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Classics, 1972.

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