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Koehn, Daryl
2019.
Toward a New (Old) Theory of Responsibility: Moving beyond Accountability.
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61.
Article contents
Plato and Pericles on Freedom and Politics*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
The main claim of this paper is that Plato's views on social and individual good as well as his criticism of democracy can be best understood as a conscious attempt to contrast with Periclean conceptions of freedom and democracy a new point of view. It will be argued that it is a mistake to see Plato's view as either democratic or authoritarian. An adequate understanding of Plato will focus on some difficult questions concerning the relationship between freedom and knowledge; questions that are rarely if ever faced clearly today. The Platonic conception and its clash with Pericles raises also some important and still unresolved questions about human motivation.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 9: New Essays on Plato , 1983 , pp. 1 - 17
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 1983
Footnotes
*
An earlier version of this paper was delivered as the Burnett Lecture on April 17, 1980 in San Diego. I am grateful to the Classics Department of San Diego University for having provided me with that opportunity, and with many useful comments.
References
1 For discussion see Kagan, Donald, The Great Dialogue (New York: Free Press 1965), 109-11,Google Scholar and the many discussions in Finley, John H., Thucydides (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1942)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 For discussion of Thucydides and Euripides see Romily, Jacqueline de, Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism, transl. Ph. Thody (Oxford: Blackwell 1963), 134-7Google Scholar.
3 Solmsen, F., Intellectual Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1975), 108-9Google Scholar
4 At least one scholar maintained that Plato did not have any direct contact with Thucydides’ work. See de Romily, 365-6.
5 Finley, 147
6 Solmsen, 153
7 Finley, 145
8 Solmsen, 109
9 For a partly similar discussion of various kinds of freedom, see Feinberg, Joel, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1973), 4–18Google Scholar.
10 In trying to understand Plato's way of thinking and the contrast in outlook between him and Aristotle, it is useful to invoke the distinction between competence and performance phrased in our times by Noam Chomsky. Needless to say, the ancients had no such distinction. But Plato thinks like a theoretician who is interested solely in a competence model. He singles out vital ingredients, and then contemplates them, in abstraction from all else, and under idealized conditions. Aristotle, on the other hand is interested, when writing about ethics, in a performance model. When he insists that the good life requires also external goods, he is listing a ‘performance factor’ that needs to be added if one wants to turn Plato's competence model into something realistic. And when he complains about Plato's notion of the Form of the Good, he is saying that not only does Plato lack a ‘performance’ model, but he has even in some cases the wrong tools for the right competence model.
11 For a different account involving various logical principles which according to the interpretation of this paper do not play significant roles here see Williams, Bernard, ‘The Analogy of City and Soul in Plato's Republic,’ in Lee, E., Mourelatos, A., and Rorty, R., eds., Exegesis and Argument (Assen: Van Gorcum 1973) 196–206Google Scholar, esp. 197-8.
12 For detailed discussion see Moravcsik, J., ‘Ancient and Modern Conceptions of Health and Medicine,’ The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1 (1976) 337-48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Too much of recent discussion has been couched in terms of idealogies taken from modern times. For a sample of the extreme positions see Popper, Karl, The Open Society and its Enemies Vol. I. fourth rev. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1961)Google Scholar and Levinson, R., In Defense of Plato (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is worth emphasizing that Plato's criticisms of democracy are not aimed at the deficiencies of some actual organization or a shallow conception, but against the Periclean model which is acknowledged even today as the finest and deepest statement of the democratic ideal. Plato's criticisms of art are not the result of insensitivity. On the contrary, he criticizes art because he appreciates its power only too well. Likewise, he criticizes democracy at its best, for he understood its functioning only too well. His criticisms deserve careful reply. His own alternative is neither democratic nor authoritarian.
14 de Romily, 365
15 Adkins, A.W.H., From the Many to the One (London: Constable 1970) 145-8Google Scholar
16 Some commentators have seen in the Menexenus veiled references to the Funeral Oration.
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