History of political thought
Lecture 1:
Who should rule?
1. The people, they constitute the state. An advantage is that there is no need to revolt. A
disadvantage is that it gets messy/.
2. The elderly, they are experienced, it is a tradition and they adverse risk.
3. The king: constitutes the state, decisive, birth-right, sanctified by god/tradition.
4. The elected: excludes the incompetent/unpopular, gives a choice to people.
5. Party: on the side of history, decisive organized around common aim.
The favorite option of Plato: let the expert rule. In other words, Epistemocracy. This
presupposes that ruling is a craft/skill or requires knowledge (or competence).
Plato lived in 428-347 before Christ in Athens. He mostly wrote dialogues, which feature his
teacher Socrates as a lead character. Socrates was put to death for teaching philosophy on the
streets of Athens and corrupting the youth by the Athenian jury. Plato founded ‘The
Academy’, where he educated young men (and sometimes young women) to become leaders
of the society. This academy lasted for at least 300 years but was destroyed by the romans.
Plato’s political thought is antipolitical. In the polis of Plato’s imagination, there is no politics.
Therefore, it is paradoxical that almost all accounts of the history of political thinking begin
with Plato. Plato formed an apolitical utopia. Utopian thinkers hope to maintain social order
and meet the needs of the population without economic or political competition and without
ruler’s having to justify their decisions to their peers or to the common people. The political
message of ‘republic’ however, is the need to enlighten us so that we may become fit to live
in kallipolis, the ideal city. Like Plato, Marx looked forward to a future in which the state,
law, coercion and competition for power had vanished and politics been replaced by rational
organization. Plato thought that nothing will go well until kings are philosophers or
philosophers are kings. Knowledge was the root of salvation and ignorance the root of
perdition.
Background of the politics in Athens:
- It was a so-called direct or popular democracy. However, women, children, slaves and
resident foreigners were excluded.
, - Met in a regular assembly. All men could participate, vote (by raising their hand), and
speak freely.
- For important mattes (e.g. war), there was the boulé or council, which was composed
of 500 citizens who were chosen by lot (Thus randomly) and who served for one year.
The group in the regular assembly was too big for effective decision making. With a
crisis, the council therefore had to decide. Through this boule, decision making power
really rotated through the city (because every year other people were chosen). This
council has important powers:
o Sets the agenda for the assembly.
o Oversaw the Athenian bureaucracy.
o It was the main jury/judges in trials
- The poor were subsidized in Athens.
- Athens was in a coalition with Sparta in the war against the Persians.
- Athens became leader of the Delian league: Athens controlled the navy and the junior
partners paid tribute to Athens. Athens protected the other countries, but they wanted
navy or cash in return. Once the Delian league was set up, the treasury of Athens
overflowed. Athens became very wealthy. Athens became confident that they could
also rule the Mediterranean’s. They start a war: the Peloponnesian war, and they get
defeated catastrophically by the war and the plague. The Spartans install ‘thirty
Tyrants’ to be in charge. The leader of the Tyrants is Critias, one of the students of
Socrates. Socrates also somewhat gets involved with these thirty tyrants. Due to a
revolution, the thirty tyrants lose their power. A new democracy is installed. Socrates
was convicted to death after this return of democracy due to his involvement. Many
wars follow, which come to an end when Philip the first concurs Greece.
Ship of state analogy. These are ten arguments to distrust direct democracy.
“(1) The sailors are quarreling among themselves over captaincy of the ship, (2) each one
thinking that he ought to be captain, (3) though he has never learned that skill. (4) On top of
which they say it can’t be taught. In fact, (5) they are prepared to cut to pieces anyone who
says it can… (6) They beg him (the ship owner) and do everything they can to make him hand
over the tiller to them. Sometimes of other people can persuade him and they can’t, They kill
those others or throw them overboard. (7) Then they immobilize their worthy ship-owner with
drugs or drinks or by some other means, and take control of the ship, helping themselves to
,what it is carrying. (8) Drinking and feasting they sail. (9) If someone is good at finding them
ways of persuading or compelling the ship-owner to let them take control, (10) they call him a
real seamen, a real captain, and say he really knows about ships”.
1. The thought that democracy leads to dissensus (Disorder). They generate disagreement
among the people, because everybody can have a say, and everybody is in control.
This seems to presuppose that people adjust their desires to what is possible (adaptive
preferences). So, people want control if they belief it is possible. Even so, all Socrates
needs for the analogy to work is that sufficient people want to be in control and that
seems more plausible. As an aside: Plato seems to have thought that the practice of
direct democracy revealed the fact of value-pluralism. People want fundamentally
different things. People’s preferences and desires rule in a democracy. Consequence of
(1) the product of the diversity and inconstancy of human desire. Appetite as such and
(2) the lack of regulation of these in a commercial democracy such as Athens. Max
weber, by contrast, thinks pluralism is a product of modernity, especially advanced
division of labor. There are different perspectives on pluralism.
2. Self-rule generates overconfidence in each of us (Reign of the false/reign of fake
news). On that self-rule always generates overconfidence in each of us, is probably too
strong. There are risk averse people. But that ruling, without external constraints
creates overconfidence is not altogether implausible. Plato would have been able to
point to the disastrous expedition to Syracuse as evidence.
3. Citizens lack expertise to know what they are doing (Reign of the false).
4. The masses deny the very existence of political expertise; ‘Everybody is able to rule,
there is no expertise needed’ (Reign of the false).
5. They threaten or kill anybody who claims intellectual superiority (everyone who
claims to have political expertise) (Disorder/anarchy). Plato could point out the trial
and execution of his mentor, Socrates. Friends of the direct democracy might argue
that the case of Socrates was the exception rather than the rule however.
6. Everybody wants to rule, and this generated murderous conflicts (Disorder and
disunity). Much of the history of Greece as relayed by Herodotys and Thucydides,
suggests an eternal return of local civil wars among the rich and poor. Interestingly
enough, Athens seems to have been the relatively stable exception (because the poor
were subsidized by income from imperial tributes). There was no civil war between
rich and poor.
7. The masses foment revolution and steal property of others (Disorder).
, 8. With the masses in control there is much rudderless pleasure (disorder). They do what
they please. So, in a democracy, pleasure rules.
9. The people are susceptible to flattery and demagogues (reign of false).
10. The masses call demagogues ‘skilled’ (reign of false). A demagogue can persuade the
masse that his ersatz/fake-political craft is, in fact, the real thing. Being good at
politics is true, but only for him. The rejection of political expertise is bad enough, but
the embrace of the demagogue’s fake skill as the real thing corrupts- presumably by
undermining trust and by generating confusion about what it is – the very idea of
political expertise. The true skill of a demagogue consists in overturning pre-existing
opinions. The demagogue’s true danger: he undermines the habits of thoughts and
reasonable expectation (by making everybody complicit in a reign of falsity).
Plato’s critique on popular democracy relies on some empirical facts/predictions about how
direct democracy behaves (or would behave). He explains these psychological commitments
in republic. He explains these political consequences in rest of republic and can rely on his
readers’ knowledge of Athenian history. He presupposes some important normative
commitments:
1. Political desirability of order/unity.
2. Political desirability of truthful politics.
Plato argues that in politics we should pursue the good (that is order, unity and truth), which
can be known by those with expertise. This is defended in the republic. Therefore, experts
should rule.
Three theoretical problems or Epistemocracy:
1. On what grounds is somebody thought qualified to lead? (what
skills/competencies/knowledge are required?).
2. Who gets to decide who the experts are and who monitors the admission of the
experts? In the republic, the experts self-select, they say who the next experts are. This
requires a strong public ethos and ability to select for competence.
3. Even if 1-2 can be met, why think the ruling experts will be accepted by the rest?
Because after all, they are prepared to cut to pieces anyone, such as with the direct
democracy.
