Rewriting Contemporary Political Philosophy with Plato and Aristotle

An Essay on Eudaimonic Politics

Paul Schollmeier

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350066199
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Politische Philosophie

Many contemporary philosophers develop political theories in an attempt to justify the societies that we currently live in. But the distribution of wealth in our societies today is becoming ever more polarized. Can these philosophers offer theories that are truly just? Paul Schollmeier takes us back to ancient political philosophy in order to present an original theory of what a society in our era ought to be, and to highlight the flaws in the liberal and libertarian political theories set forth by Robert Nozick and John Rawls. Adapting the ancient principle of happiness found in Plato and Aristotle, he introduces the concept of a eudaimonic polity, which promotes engagement in political activity primarily for its own sake and not for private profit or pleasure. Schollmeier argues that we can best exercise our rational and political nature when we participate together with others in political activity without an ulterior motive. Lucid in argumentation and original in approach, this book presents a strong case for a eudaimonic polity that firmly favors public interest over private interest.

Part One

The Cave: The Turn to the Intelligible

1

Rational Animals

1. Where ought we to begin—we who are audacious enough to believe that our reflections might yield an insight into political society and sanguine enough to imagine that our insight, if any, might have an influence on the course of human events?

Philosophers given to pondering political phenomena exhibit a propensity to begin at the beginning. Modern philosophers are especially prone to begin in this way though the ancients are not entirely disinclined. And rightly so, I think. We surely ought to begin where we have most obviously begun. But we have not, I would submit, begun at the beginning! Where did we begin, then? In medias res! Who among us has not been born, willy-nilly, into a political society? Not one of us, I dare say.

I concede that there are feral children, raised without human society by animals in the wild, as were Remus and Romulus of legend. But these poor children are thankfully rare. If not discovered early enough, they must pay most dearly for the errors of those who abandoned them to the beasts of the forest or the desert. They have at best a diminished capacity to philosophize or even to cognize, let alone to socialize, because of those more bestial than the animals that could nourish them but could not nurture them.

The closest we might come to a political beginning would be a state of naïveté. We are initially, and too often subsequently, naïve about our society, into which we are born, and even about our very selves. We are especially naïve about our philosophical and political nature, I shall argue. But our initial naïveté is for us, I admit, a natural state as well. We cannot but be naïve philosophically and politically when we are born even though we are ab initio ensconced within a society.

Modern philosophers usually take our political beginning to be found in what they call a state of nature. This natural state most frequently, though not always, constitutes a condition that is rather bleak. Thomas Hobbes, for example, famously declares that we humans initially find ourselves in a natural situation that is a war “of every man against every man.” This situation, he famously informs us, entails a life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Leviathan 1. 13. 8–9.).

But we soon discover the disadvantages of war and the advantages of peace, he argues. We learn that there is no justice in an all-out war, and that virtue is nothing but force and fraud (Leviathan 1. 13. 13.). We can establish peace if we form a contract with others and grant ourselves only as much liberty against others as we would grant others against ourselves (Leviathan 1. 14. 5.). This contract he takes to be the origin of justice (Leviathan 1. 15. 1–2.).

Ancient philosophers are not entirely unaware that one might postulate a natural state of this sort. Plato, for example, acknowledges it. In his celebrated dialogue on a just political society, he portrays an interlocutor describing a natural condition strikingly similar in its essentials to a Hobbesian state of nature. Though he does not himself accept it, Glaucon takes the position that by nature to do injustice is good and to suffer it is bad (Republic 2. 358e).

People soon discover, Glaucon continues, that the goodness of doing injustice is considerably less than the badness of suffering it. So they readily establish a contract of neither doing nor suffering injustice. Their contract is the origin of justice, he asserts. Justice is a mean between the best, which is to do injustice with impunity, and the worst, which is to suffer injustice without recourse (Republic 2. 358e–359a; also see Gorgias 483b–483d).

But I find myself obliged to ask, How many of us actually began our political life in a state of nature? Surely, not one of us! How many of us have lived even for a time in a state of nature? Most likely, only those few who have had the terrible misfortune to have been caught up in the clutches of war or poverty in the extreme, I should think. Most people have somehow managed, less through choice than through chance, to escape a fate of this dire sort.

I do not object to the fact that a state of nature is a hypothetical, perhaps mythical, situation. What I suggest is that to begin with a state of nature is to begin with the wrong hypothetical situation. If we wish to begin at the beginning, we surely ought to begin with a consideration of the situation in which we most likely began our political lives. We should do so even though in our reflections we must perforce rely on hypothesis.

My intention, then, is to avoid the presumption of beginning where no one has likely begun. I would venture to assert that any supposed state of nature might itself be an expression of a naïveté at once philosophical and political, and that, if we were to begin unawares in naïveté, we might very well end our philosophical reflections unawares in naïveté. That is to say, if we were to begin with a false presumption about our natural state, we might very likely end with a false assumption about our political state.

What is worse, if we begin with a false assumption, even if we take it for a hypothesis initially, we could all too easily end with the very same mistaken assumption and take it for more than a hypothesis. We might eventually presume to take our initial hypothesis for a non-hypothetical, perhaps god-given, principle of political theory and practice!

But I do not mean to seem so unpolitic. Let us turn to what I take to be our naïve beginning so that I might the better explain myself.

2. A state of naïveté is more germane to our present inquiry than a state of nature not only because it is more proximate in our experience. A state of this kind is germane also because it affords us an opportunity for reflection on our often benighted, if not bewildered, cognizance of our political and philosophical situation and on our capacity, though not unmitigated, for philosophical and political enlightenment.

That any knowledge of our naïveté cannot be other than hypothetical, I readily concede. We shall in fact see that all knowledge allotted to us poor worldlings is and can only be hypothetical. Our knowledge of our very lives, whether political or philosophical, presents no exception. We must employ hypotheses to understand and, presumably, to overcome our initial naïveté about our present endeavors and our past and future endeavors.

The fact that human knowledge is hypothetical does have advantages. We may avail ourselves of various heuristic devices in our pursuit of knowledge, whether political or not. Among these devices, the American pragmatists would remind us, we find experimentation. We shall obviously be concerned in our present inquiry with a philosophical experiment though I would note that our experiments can be either philosophical or political.

But the fact that we only know hypothetically has its disadvantages, too. We poor mortals can, alas, never really and truly know any truth or reality. Our theoretical principles are obviously less than absolute. Even the vaunted postulates of Euclidian geometry, seemingly empyrean, have proved to be less than unexceptional. Not to mention our practical, including political, assumptions and presumptions.

I wish to begin with a philosophical experiment of ancient origin. This particular experiment is no more than a model, and it is, as are all models, a simplification of the facts. But this model I think worthy of our consideration because its simplification, if we take it seriously, can give us a profound insight into our initial state of naïveté, which we may neither remember nor understand as well as we might imagine.

The model in question is actually an allegory. Allegories, I know, are out of fashion today. But an allegory I take to be merely an example albeit an imagined one. We might think of this allegory more fashionably as a hypothetical, contrary-to-fact example. This particular contrary-to-fact example will, I hope, serve to quicken our recollection and make our past, in its essentials at least, clearer to us. Yes, to understand it, we shall have to recollect our past as best we can with an imagined example.

I wish to suggest with this allegory that the philosophical presuppositions of political theories in our day are particularly naïve. These presuppositions for the most part presume political phenomena to be not so much intelligible objects as sensible objects. Philosophers who reflect on politics tend to consider our ideas and impressions themselves not to be objects worthy of our desire. They prefer to take our ideas and impressions to be indicative of other objects, primarily visible and tangible. These other objects, including our material selves and our material resources, they think desirable.

We ought, I would urge, to consider the possibility at least that intelligible objects might themselves be desire-worthy. We might discover that intangible things have not only intellectual value but also practical value. Our intellectual principles, theoretical as well as practical, may prove to have a goodness of their own. If so, these intangibles may prove worthy of our endeavors, perhaps more worthy than tangibles.

Why might this distinction be important? The distinction is important because our philosophical presuppositions inform our political theories, and our political theories in turn inform our political lives. What objects we deem desirable in our theories has consequences for our actions and shapes our actions either felicitously or infelicitously.

The allegory in question I take from Plato. I wish to ponder our political plight with an analysis of his allegory of the cave. Plato himself does not obviously use his allegory to hypothesize a political beginning for us. But with it he surely does portray a naïve mind as well as a mind less naïve. He asserts that the allegory concerns persons both uneducated and educated (Republic 7. 514a). He indicates further that the allegory is meant to illustrate a hypothesis about our education. Education, he claims, is a process of turning a soul away from objects of becoming toward objects of being (518b–d).

Plato would thus imply that we might overcome our naïveté if we can turn our attention away from sensible objects to intelligible objects. I am taking objects of becoming and being to be sensible and intelligible entities. Plato is famous for this distinction. The distinction underlies another allegory that serves to introduce the allegory of the cave. He uses what he calls the simile of the sun to distinguish a visible world from an intelligible world and to draw an analogy between the two (Republic 6. 507b–509c, esp. 508b–d).

The allegory of the cave, I admit, might seem to be more an introduction to philosophy proper than to political philosophy. Philosophers customarily so take it. But one might surmise that the cave would have some significance for political inquiry. After all, Plato does place his allegory in a dialogue that has the ostensive purpose of setting forth his theory of a just political society.

My purpose, then, shall be to employ what Plato has to say about uneducated and educated persons to show what our political beginning might initially have been and what our beginning might eventually come to be. His hypothesis about human education entails philosophical consequences and political consequences that are hardly insignificant.

Let us ask, How does the allegory of cave illustrate human education? Readers who have any familiarity with it know that this allegory presents a rather unusual scene. We might accordingly refresh our memory. What would we see if we were to enter the cave? We would first discern within the cave a fire burning, and beyond the fire we would make out a path with a low wall constructed along its far side.

If we were to cross the path, we would be able to peer over the wall, and we would discover on the other side, dimly lit to be sure, people held in bondage. Because of their bondage, these unfortunate souls can neither move in place nor even turn their heads. They are constrained to face the far wall of the cave. They are, in a word, pilloried.

But we might have to step aside. Before long we would encounter people coming and going along the path. They walk between the fire and the low wall, and over their heads they hold up objects that are images of natural things, including people, and artificial things. They make use of the fire to cast shadows of these objects on the far wall of the cave. These people sometimes speak, and their words echo off the far wall.

The people holding the objects up would thus appear to be putting on a shadow play of some kind. Indeed, the result of their efforts is what Plato calls an extraordinary show for the prisoners. The flickering shadows on the wall of the cave seem to be animated and even to speak (Republic 7. 514a–515a, 515b).

How might this odd scene illustrate an educational hypothesis? Plato states laconically, “Like unto us” the prisoners are (Republic 7. 515a). How could the prisoners possibly be like us? He explains only that the prisoners see nothing of themselves except for their shadows on the far wall (515a–b). Remember their constraints. The prisoners might also hear little of their voices except for their echoes off the wall.

The prisoners thus have a rather limited view of their situation. Is this how they are like unto us? Indeed, what they see of their world are merely the shadows of the puppets on the wall of the cave. Plato indicates explicitly that the prisoners take these shadows for the truth (515b–c). They would most likely take their own shadows for the truth, too, I would suppose. After all, they see nothing of themselves except their shadows.

One might say that these prisoners are very much like children attending a puppet theater. The children could easily be captivated by a similar show. But the prisoners are also unlike children at a theater. The children can turn around and see the puppets, and they can stand up and leave the theater if they wish. They might even be invited to come behind the scenes after the show and to see how the performance is done.

The allegory, then, would suggest that a political society might be a theater of some kind. Or, at least, that a society might have a theatrical aspect. The prisoners are in circumstances obviously theatrical and obviously social if not political. They are constrained to look at and to listen to visual and aural images that others create and animate for them.

One can now see how the prisoners are like unto us. We are not literally pilloried in a cave. But we are perforce restricted to a stream of images in our communications with one another, and we can become enthralled with the flow of images. I would think this fact more obvious today than ever given our mass media, including radio, television, and now the internet. But even everyday, face-to-face, communication occurs only with aural and visual imagery.¹

We can also begin to see how Plato’s allegory illustrates his hypothesis about education. Plato already indicates for us that the prisoners are less than well educated. They know little or nothing but the shadows and echoes of their cave because of their constraints. We might say that they are quite taken with shadows playing on the cave wall.

Could the prisoners escape from a more naïve outlook to an outlook less naïve if they were able to turn their heads around and to see the puppets? They would then see the truth of the shadows, which are but images. But could they see the truth itself? They obviously could not. The puppets, too, are images. The prisoners might take for the truth objects that are only artifacts.

But now things become yet curiouser. The prisoners would initially take their own shadows, too, for the truth, would they not? But could they catch a glimpse of themselves, say of a hand or a foot, would they again be taking an image for the truth? After all, the puppets, which cast the shadows, are images. This fact would appear to imply that the prisoners themselves might be images of some sort. They might somehow be puppet-like.

Could one be naïve, then, to take sensible objects for the truth? But are not sensible things really and truly real? you might ask. Plato suggests otherwise. The prisoners and the puppets are sensible objects, but sensible objects appear to be the concern of the naïve. Indeed, he indicates for us that the prisoners would be less than well educated even if they could see the puppets and themselves. Education, recall, requires that we turn from sensible objects to intelligible objects.

Plato does offer an explanation that takes us a little further. When he does, he alludes to another allegory. This allegory appears to have some relevance to his hypothesis about education because it concerns objects of different kinds, and among them are objects of becoming and of being. Or, more explicitly, it concerns sensible as well as intelligible objects.

This other allegory is also well known. It is the figure of the divided line. Plato gives this figure a more literal interpretation. The divided line has four unequal segments. These segments represent both our mental affections and their objects (Republic ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Part 1: The Cave: The Turn to the Intelligible
• Part 2: A Eudaimonic Polity: An Opportunity Overlooked in Contemporary Political Thought
• Part 3: The Cave Again: The Daunting Prospect of Political Tragedy
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint