Philosophy and politics

Social Research, Fall, 2004 by Hannah Arendt

THE GULF BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS OPENED HISTORICALLY with the trial and condemnation of Socrates, which in the history of political thought plays the same role of a turning point that the trial and condemnation of Jesus plays in the history of religion. Our tradition of political thought began when the death of Socrates made Plato despair of polls life and, at the same time, doubt certain fundamentals of Socrates' teachings. The fact that Socrates had not been able to persuade his judges of his innocence and his merits, which were so obvious to the better and younger of Athens' citizens, made Plato doubt the validity of persuasion. We have difficulty in grasping the importance of this doubt, because "persuasion" is a very weak and inadequate translation of the ancient peithein, the political importance of which is indicated by the fact that Peitho, the goddess of persuasion, had a temple in Athens. To persuade, peithein, was the specifically political form of speech, and since the Athenians were proud that they, in distinction to the barbarians, conducted their political affairs in the form of speech and without compulsion, they considered rhetoric, the art of persuasion, the highest, the truly political art. Socrates' speech in the Apology is one of its great examples, and it is against this defense that Plato writes in the Phaedo a "revised apology" that he called, with irony, "more persuasive" (pithanoteron, 63B), since it ends with a myth of the Hereafter, complete with bodily punishments and rewards, calculated to frighten rather than merely persuade the audience. Socrates' point in his defense before the citizens and judges of Athens had been that his behavior was in the best interest of the city. In the Crito he had explained to his friends that he could not flee but rather, for political reasons, must suffer the death penalty. It seems that he was not only unable to persuade his judges but also could not convince his friends. In other words, the city had no use for a philosopher, and the friends had no use for political argumentation. This is part of the tragedy to which Plato's dialogues testify.

Closely connected with his doubt about the validity of persuasion is Plato's furious denunciation of doxa, opinion, which not only ran like a red thread through his political works but became one of the cornerstones of his concept of truth. Platonic truth, even when doxa is not mentioned, is always understood as the very opposite of opinion. The spectacle of Socrates submitting his own doxa to the irresponsible opinions of the Athenians, and being outvoted by a majority, made Plato despise opinions and yearn for absolute standards. Such standards, by which human deeds could be judged and human thought could achieve some measure of reliability, from then on became the primary impulse of his political philosophy, and influenced decisively even the purely philosophical doctrine of ideas. I do not think, as is often maintained, that the concept of ideas was primarily a concept of standards and measures, nor that its origin was political. But this interpretation is all the more understandable and justifiable because Plato himself was the first to use the ideas for political purposes, that is, to introduce absolute standards into the realm of human affairs where, without such transcending standards, everything remains relative. As Plato himself used to point out, we do not know what absolute greatness is, but experience only something greater or smaller in relationship to something else.

TRUTH AND OPINION

The opposition of truth and opinion was certainly the most anti-Socratic conclusion that Plato drew from Socrates' trial. Socrates, in failing to convince the city, had shown that the city is no safe place for the philosopher, not only in the sense that his life is not safe because of the truth he possesses, but also in the much more important sense that the city cannot be trusted with preserving the memory of the philosopher. If the citizens could condemn Socrates to death, they were only too liable to forget him when he was dead. His earthly immortality would be safe only if philosophers could be inspired with a solidarity of their own which was opposed to the solidarity of the polis and their fellow citizens. The old argument against the sophoi, wise men, which recurs in Aristotle as well as in Plato, that they do not know what is good for themselves (the prerequisite for political wisdom) and that they look ridiculous when they appear in the marketplace and are a common laughing stock--as Thales was laughed at by a peasant girl when, staring up at the skies, he fell into the well at his feet--was turned by Plato against the city.

In order to comprehend the enormity of Plato's demand that the philosopher should become the ruler of the city, we must keep in mind these common "prejudices" that the polls had with respect to philosophers, but not with respect to artists and poets. Only the sophos who does not know what is good for himself will know even less what is good for the polls. The sophos, the wise man as ruler, must be seen in opposition to the current ideal of the phronimos, the understanding man whose insights into the world of human affairs qualify him for leadership, though of course not to rule. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, was not thought to be the same at all as this insight, phronesis. The wise man alone is concerned with matters outside the polis, and Aristotle is in full agreement with this public opinion when he states: "Anaxagoras and Thales were wise; but not understanding men. They were not interested in what is good for men [anthropina agatha]" (Nic. Eth. 1140 a 25-30; 1141 b 4-8). Plato did not deny that the concern of the philosopher was with eternal, nonchanging, nonhuman matters. But he did not agree that this made him unfit to play a political role. He did not agree with the polis's conclusion that the philosopher, without concern for the human good, was himself in constant danger of becoming a good-for-nothing. The notion of good (agathos) has no connection here with what we mean by goodness in an absolute sense; it means exclusively good-for, beneficial or useful (chresimon) and is therefore unstable and accidental since it is not necessarily what it is but can always be different. The reproach that philosophy can deprive citizens of their personal fitness is implicitly contained in Pericles' famous statement: philokaloumen met' euteleias kai philosophoumen aneu malakias (we love the beautiful without exaggeration and we love wisdom without softness or unmanliness) (Thuc. 2. 40). In distinction from our own prejudices, in which softness and unmanliness are rather connected with the love of the beautiful, the Greeks saw this danger in philosophy. Philosophy, the concern with truth regardless of the realm of human affairs--and not love of the beautiful, which everywhere was represented in the polis, in statues and poetry, in music and the Olympic games--drove its adherents out of the polis and made them unfit for it. When Plato claimed rulership for the philosopher because he alone could behold the idea of the good, the highest of the eternal essences, he opposed the polls on two grounds: he first claimed that the philosopher's concern with eternal things did not put him at risk of becoming a good-for-nothing, and, second, he asserted that these eternal things were even more "valuable" than they were beautiful. His reply to Protagoras that not man but a god is the measure of all human things is only another version of the same statement (Laws 716D).