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Lecture 1 - History of Political Thought
1. Plato on Expert Rule
Who should rule?
Some answers (not exhaustive):
o ‘The People’
They constitute the state (sovereign?), nobody needs to revolt because everybody is part of the
power, fair, (etc.)
o ‘The Elderly’
Experienced because they saw a lot, safe-guard tradition, risk averse (etc.)
o ‘The King/Queen’
Constitutes the state (sovereign), decisive, birth-right --luck sanctified by God/tradition --,
simple mechanism, (etc.)
But the question is who should be the king? And here comes the fact that it is a simple
mechanism, it is a gift of God, which also gives the beauty of monarchies.
o ‘The Elect(ed)’ [president/cabinet]
Excludes the incompetent/impopulair, gives a choice to the people or religious, (etc.)
It is a risky way though because of possible civil wars.
o ‘The Party’
On the side of history, decisive, organized around common aim, etc.
This used to be really popular.
Another Option:
Expert(s)-rule or Epistemocracy (Plato What he regarded as the phisolopher-king)
o ἐπιστήμη (Episteme) = knowledge
o κρατέω (krateo) = to rule
Presupposes that ruling is a craft/skill or requires knowledge (or competence)
o E.g. Hillary Clinton campaigned on her competence. The same goes of Theresa May who is regarded
as the boring but competent leader that the UK needs.
The mechanism is based on techonocracy, to ensure that the skilled are in power.
On Athens:
We have inherited from the Ancient Greeks many of current terms used to describe politics, “politics” itself,
“aristocracy”, “tyranny”, and “democracy”. Furthermore, we also have the same ideals as they used to, based on
independence and self-government, couples with a heated passion for freedom. Greek thinkers argued that politics
could only exist in self-governing city-states and under the rule of law (Ryan 2012: 6).
Political Thought in its modern form began in Athens, a trading people who used to observe other peoples and their
everyday activities.
It was a so-called direct or popular democracy (Ryan 2012: 9-18):
o On technical terms: No election for parliament
o Limited to free male citizens (about 30,000 people)
, Excluding women, children, slaves, and resident foreigners
To be a citizen equaled to be a man. Their restrictive attitude to women was not universal in
Greece.
Citizenship was also by descent.
o Problems of internal conflict were solved by the organization of citizens into ten “tribes”, based on
geographical groupings:
Each tribe would supply 50 members of the boule, and also ten strategoi, or generals.
- “In the case of the strategoi, democratic principle was sacrificed to experience,
expertise, and reliability” (Ryan 2012: 13).
The most famous strategoi was Pericles, leading Athens before the
Peloponnesian War. He was a demagogue for the Assembly, a leader of the
demos, of the common people.
o Met in a regular assembly (Ekklēsia).
All men could participate, vote (by raising hand), and speak freely (isegoria)
You could say what you thought without punishment
In modern terms, it was legislature, judiciary, and executive. “Although its potential membership
was 40,000, it operated through the 500 members of the governing council, or boule, whole
members formed the Athenian administration for a year, and the prytany, the 30-stron body
whose members formed the managing committee of the boule for a month at a time. Both
bodies were chosen by lottery, after a careful scrutiny of the eligibility of those whose names
went into the lottery” (Ryan 2012: 11).
o For important/urgent matters (e.g., war) there was the boulē or council, which was composed of 500
citizens who were chosen by lot and who served for one year:
Many magistrates were also chosen by lot.
The council set the agenda for the assembly and oversaw the Athenian bureaucracy; (c) it was
the main jury/judges in trials.
- Unitary state
Combination of the idea of legislative and judiciary power.
- But later came the idea of separation of powers by Polybius (200 –118 BC), which was
later encouraged by Montesquieu (1689-1755)
The poor were subsidized to do so.
Demographics Athens:
o At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 BCE) Athens consisted of about 50,000 adult male
citizens, 200, 000 free native inhabitants, and 300,000 inhabitants in all, with foreigners and slaves (Ryan
2012: 6).
Fifth and Fourth Century Athens:
o “Greek city-states existed on a permanent war footing; when not at war they soon might be, and when
not actually fighting they were often in a state of armed truce” (Ryan 2012: 6).
o There were two views of how a polis was formed:
Military
Political
o Political leaders would be supplied by the leading families of Athens.
o They developed a mercantile economy and systems of banking and insurance.
o The Fifth century was dominated by two great wars:
The Persian Wats lasted with interludes from 500 to 479.
, The Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 and ended in 404.
o 492-449:
Leading part of coalition (with Sparta) in the wars that defeated Persians.
o 478ff: Athens became leader of:
Delian league (Perikles).
Voluntary, but it became a de facto Athenian empire.
Athens controled the navy.
The junior partners paid tribute to Athens.
They would do the fighting, and everybody else would contribute or pay.
o 431–404: Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought by the Delian League led
by Athens against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta.
Plague and defeat.
Athens did not have such a good ending. They were defeted in the Peloponnesian War, after
which a oligarchy was pruposed.
“The downfall of Athens was caused by personal rivalries, internal dissension, and a fatal
overestiamtion of its capacity. The disastrous expedition to Sicily sprang from the ambition of
Alcibiades, one of the most brilliant, self-destructive,a and wayward poltiical entrepreneurs of
all times. [...]. He was astonishingly brave, a briliant general, and an inspiring leader” (Ryan
2012: 25).
The Peloponnesian War is important in this discussion at it should the strengths and weaknesses
of democracy. “On the one side, the resourcefulness, patriotism, energy, and determination of
Athens were astonishing; on the other, the fickleness, cruelty, and proness to dissension were
equally astonishing” (Ryan 2012: 28).
o 404/3: Thirty Tyrants
Led by Critias (a student of Socrates)
- He is hot-blooded, loves war and punishiment.
“The Thirty Tyrants, deprived all but some five hundred citizens of nay say in Athenian politics,
allowed only the wealthiest five thousand citizens the right to be tried before a jury, and
murdered numerous opponents without the formality of a trial” (Ryan 2012: 29).
There is a revolution to get rid of him, and they went after Socrates who they blamed for Critias.
o 399: Socrates convicted to death after return of democracy:
One of the regime’s earliest acts was to put Socrates on trial for impiety.
“With the trial of Socrates, the history of Western political thinking begins. Socrates’ death
sparked off Plato’s astonishing philosophical career. Even is Plato had never been born,
Socrates’ death would have raised hard questions about the limits of sate authority and the
citizen’s duty to obey the legally constituted authorities” (Ryan 2012: 29).
He was condemned to death on the charge of impiety, which meant that he had denied the
existence of gods and had corrupted the young.
However, they did not want Socrates to die. Rather, they presented him with the chance to stop
teaching. Even after his death sentence, he was encouraged to leave the city. But, insisting that
he was an Athenian, thus a law-abiding citizen, he would rather die as a just human,
o 338: Athens defeated by Philip 1
o Then, Alexander conquers the world and Greek Phisolophy is spread all over the world.
, Plato:
428? - 347 BC, Athens.
He came from a rich, upper-class Athenian family, his relatives being even members of the oligarchy that briefly
replaced democracy at the end of the Peloponnesian War.
o Plato said that he was actually asked to join the regime but refused due to him being repelled by its
violence.
Even though Plato’s political thinking was rather antipolitical, almost all accounts of the history of political
thinking begin with Plato.
“Utopian thinkers hope to maintain social order and meet the needs of the population without economic or
political competition, and without rulers’ having to justify their decisions to their peers or to the common
people” (Ryan 2012: 31).
Aristotle said about Plato that he completely purifies politics.
Mostly wrote Dialogues
o Most of which feature his teacher, Socrates, as lead character
Socrates believed his purpose was to enlighten Athens.
o Socrates was put to death by Athenian jury as the greatest thinker
After the death of Socrate, Plato went into exile and only returned to Athen several years later
and houded the Academy where he taught for the rest of his life.
He was also an institution builder Founded the Academy:
o Lasted about 900 years and its aim was to teach good ethical and intellectual habits to aristocratic young
men.
o The Academy’s motto was “Let nobody approach who does not know geometry.” This illustrates the
obsession that Plato had with the abstract fields of geometry and mathematics, as he believed that all
forms of knowledge should be modeled on the knowledge of the previously mentioned disciplines.
o It was closed in 529 CE on the orders of the emperor Justinian with the purpose of purging non-Christian
ideas.
Would be teacher of the ruler/tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius II which actually got him to jail. But otherwise he
mostly stayed out of politics.
He was an Aristocrat who disliked politics, but also the murderous oligarchies.
“There can be no thumbnail account of what Plato thought. The attraction of the dialogou as a literary device is
that it lets an author consider ideas in them from a variety of different angles without wholly committing
himself” (Ryan 2012: 38).
The Republic:
It is not completely clear when Republic acquired its present dominant status. Mostly, it might have been an
effect of the Victorian obsession with educating young men for public life. From that moment, Republic has been
several times regarded as a treatise on education.
o “Its political message is the need to enlighten us so that we may become fit to live in Kallipolis, the ideal
city” (Ryan 2012: 33).
The focus is on what our rulers should know, the nature of the justice that should be sought after both in
humans and in the polis, what happens when those who are not fit rule, and those who are fit do not rule, and
who actually should rule.
The first book is “a self-contained discussion of the question whether we always do better to practice justice
rather than injustice” (Ryan 2012: 47).
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