Minerva's Owl

The Tradition of Western Political Thought

Jeffrey Abramson

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780674261341
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Informal in tone yet serious in content, this book serves as a lively and accessible guide for readers discovering the tradition of political thought that dates back to Socrates and Plato. Because the arguments of the great philosophers are nearly eternal, even those long schooled on politics will find that this book calls on recurring questions about morality and power, justice and war, the risk of democracy, the necessity for evil, the perils of tolerance, and the meaning of happiness. Jeffrey Abramson argues politics with the classic writers and draws the reader into a spirited conversation with contemporary examples that illustrate the enduring nature of political dilemmas. As the discussions deepen, the voices of Abramson's own teachers, and of the students he has taught, enter into the mix, and the book becomes a tribute not just to the great philosophers but also to the special bond between teacher and student.As Hegel famously noted, referring to the Roman goddess Minerva, her owl brought back wisdom only at dusk, when it was too late to shine light on actual politics. Abramson reminds us that there are real political problems to confront, and in a book filled with grace and passion, he captures just how exciting serious learning can be.

1

PLATO’S REPUBLIC

THE DEBATE OVER JUSTICE BEGINS

The Republic begins one day when a group of young men escape from the city for a holiday. They do what young people often do when they want to get out of the city: they gravitate down to the water, to the sea, in this case the Piraeus or port area of Athens. Like most ports, the Piraeus was—and still is today—a mixing ground where sailors and traders, foreign imports and peoples mingle with locals. On this particular day the Piraeus is the place to be because it is hosting a first-of-its-kind religious festival. Processions to the gods move through the public ways, the Athenians taking turns with celebrants from Thrace, who, we are assured, put on quite a show.

The Republic ends the same day, in the next world, about as far from the Piraeus as you can get. But like the Piraeus, the netherworld is a port of entry and exit, with new souls arriving all the time and old souls bound for earth in an endless cycle of reincarnation.

In between the port of entry into Athens and the port of rebirth, a group of young men will build a city, fight wars, dabble in sport, poetry, and music, redistribute property, and recognize women as political equals, all only to abandon political power finally for the higher pleasures of philosophy and wisdom.

It is quite a day, most of it taking place in the imagination, of course, but no one emerges unscathed from what imagination reveals. Socrates will be executed in Athens for supposedly corrupting the young on days such as this. One of the young listeners, Polemarchus, will throw himself into politics and will also be put to death. Two others in attendance are Plato’s real-life brothers, and they foreshadow the fate of Plato, for whom the day’s devotion to his teacher stretches into a lifetime.

Little of this could be foreseen when the drama starts. The day’s festival is over, and the young men are waiting for the real fireworks to begin after sunset, when for the first time a sunset spectacular will feature a never-before-seen torchlight parade on horseback to honor the goddess.¹ As they wander about, the young men bump into Socrates and Glaucon, Plato’s brother, who have come to the Piraeus to observe how the festival will go. It is typical of Socrates to be out and about, popping up in places that youth frequent. Platonic dialogues put Socrates at drinking parties, on porticos, in conversation with nervous fathers about the education of their sons.

On this particular occasion Socrates has seen enough of the festival and is preparing to leave the Piraeus with Glaucon when the other young men urge him to stay and witness the premiere of the torchlight parade. Socrates playfully responds with a kind of mock awe: “On horseback . . . that is novel. Will they hold torches and pass them to one another while racing the horses, or what do you mean?”²

Although Socrates is making fun of youthful enthusiasm for anything new, still he takes young persons’ pleasures seriously enough to agree to stay and see what the fuss is about. It is as if the pleasures of the young have to be given their due, neither judged nor dismissed, certainly not skipped. Thus it comes about that Socrates accompanies the young men to the home of one of them, Polemarchus, whose family lives and does business down at the Piraeus. When they retire to the house to wait for nightfall and the start of the entertainment, no one has the slightest intention of talking about politics, justice, or any other such serious topic. Not thinking about justice seems one of the privileges of youth, since there will be time later in life to worry about such matters and make up for any mistakes committed. (During the 2000 presidential campaign, for instance, then-candidate George W. Bush made a virtue of acknowledging that, although he had committed his share of youthful indiscretions, he had long since matured.)

As the Republic begins, the young men are in a playful mood, toying familiarly with Socrates. And yet no one makes it to the torchlight parade that night. Somehow—exactly how is always a mystery—the young men’s easy attraction to visual splendor and outdoor festivals gives way to festivals for the mind. This shift is accomplished without loss of the passion the young men first feel at the prospect of witnessing pyrotechnics. Only in the end what keeps them up all night down at the Piraeus is the discovery of the beauty of conversation.

It is certainly Socrates’ mission in the Republic to change, elevate, and sublimate youth’s natural eroticism. But the enthusiasms of eros are never repressed, never denied. Plato is always at pains to depict Socrates as lacking in physical beauty (“snub-nosed” is the favorite description). Yet in the Symposium, Plato shows that Socratic “seduction” needed neither physical beauty nor drink nor sex; it was a matter of how young men’s passions respond to what we still today call platonic love.

Enter Cephalus and a Father’s Advice

Picture, then, Socrates arriving at the home of Polemarchus in the Piraeus. There we meet up with Cephalus, Polemarchus’ father. We know three pieces of Cephalus’ biography: he is old, he is rich, and he is not a citizen of Athens but a merchant given resident alien status to live down in the Piraeus. Socrates right off mentions that Cephalus “seemed very old to me,” and Cephalus volunteers that the pleasures of the body “wither away in me.”³ Cephalus seems old psychologically as well as chronologically. He refers to the time fast approaching when he must make preparations to die. Indeed when we first meet him, Cephalus has just propitiated the gods with a sacrifice, and he is sitting “on a sort of cushioned stool . . . crowned with a wreath.”⁴

As to his wealth, we learn that Cephalus is old, not new, money. He regards money with the detachment that comes from inheriting rather than earning it. His grandfather accumulated the family fortune, his father squandered some of it, and Cephalus rates somewhere between the two in terms of his merchandising talents. Still, as opposed to Plato’s own aristocratic lineage, Cephalus belongs to a rising middle class in Athens whose wealth is tied to trade rather than land.

You and I do not expect a polite dinner guest to draw attention to a host’s age or income, but Socrates does both. Cunningly, he flatters Cephalus by asking him to serve as our advance scout as to what it is like to be old, reporting back what he has learned from standing on the “threshold of old age.” Cephalus takes the bait and plays the role of the wise man (though, as we shall see, Socrates plays him for a fool). It is not as bad as people say, Cephalus reports. In fact old age works a great release and liberation from “the mad masters” of the body.⁵ Cephalus congratulates himself on no longer chasing after women the way he did when young; at long last he has arrived at a plateau where he can enjoy the very pleasure of conversation Socrates is giving to him now.

I do not know if young people today have ever met a contemporary Cephalus. The Cephalean remark I hear repeatedly from friends is that they “would never want to be twenty again.” Such a remark may provide consolation to those of us who can no longer wreak havoc the way we (claim we) did when young. But one never hears a twenty-year-old wish to be fifty unless the young person is in serious trouble. I suspect that we are supposed to see through the thin rationalization Cephalus offers for the sobriety of old age. Cephalus is a great literary creation, a precursor to Polonius in Hamlet, boastfully offering the benefit of his supposed wisdom but in fact spouting only hackneyed platitudes.

Socrates must have been a strange dinner guest indeed. Cephalus has just credited his own excellent moral character for cushioning the usual impact of old age. Socrates listens and—I am not making this up—decides to “stir . . . him up” by suggesting that “other people” will say it is money, not virtue, that relieves Cephalus of the burdens of old age.⁶ Cephalus apparently thinks he is being congratulated and agrees that “gentlemen” like him—not the newly minted rich who actually care about money—know how to use their wealth well. When Socrates follows up by asking what, then, is the greatest good money can provide the elderly, Cephalus makes the argument that turns the night’s conversation into a discussion about justice. Money makes it possible for him to be just, to settle his accounts with the gods and men alike: “[W]hen a man comes face to face with the realization that he will be making an end, fear and care enter him for things to which he gave no thought before.”⁷ This is a remarkably frank statement on Cephalus’ part but hardly one that casts justice in an attractive light. For Cephalus, the greatest good of wealth is in “not having to depart for that other place frightened because one owes some sacrifices to a god or money to a human being.”⁸

Cephalus does not know it—he does not even want to know it—but he has just offered a “theory” of justice. It turns out that as a practical man involved in the merchandising business, Cephalus has developed ideas on the subject of fairness—ideas that I call an “accountant’s” concept of justice. Justice for him is not very complicated; it is a matter of honest bookkeeping. Everyone in life is a borrower and a lender (Polonius would warn against this); we each borrow from the gods and exchange goods with fellows. When the time comes, we should pay back debts and call in loans.

The notion that justice is a matter of settling accounts is one appropriate to old age and its moments of reckoning. Cephalus concedes that he was not much interested in settling accounts when he was young and had a lifetime yet to close the books. Only the fear of death has given him a belated reason to practice justice. It is expected that we run up debt when young; the important thing is to make amends before dying.

Much later in the history of political thought the French philosopher Pascal will suggest that the smart money gambles on the existence of God. If God turns out not to exist, then all you are out by living as if the divine did exist is the finite time and effort you put into believing in a fiction. But if God turns out to exist, and you gambled by not believing, then a much worse fate—eternal damnation—awaits. (Of course, Pascal’s wager did not factor in the possibility that God would be most offended by, and most damning of, those who believed in divinity only as a way to hedge their bets.)

Cephalus is too traditionally pious to express his commitment to justice as a gamble, but he does talk as if he is now sitting there crowned with a wreath, sacrificing to the gods, to cover himself in the next life. For the young men listening to the exchange between the two older men in the room, the constant reference to the fear of death cannot be what they anticipated talking about while passing the hours until the start of the night’s entertainments.

In the introduction to this book I suggested that we all live out some political philosophy, without the need to put it into words. Cephalus is a great example of someone who acts on the basis of views he has never had occasion to ponder. Socrates takes it upon himself to see what will happen if Cephalus is made to defend views he does not even know he holds. So Socrates poses a hypothetical. What if a friend lends you a weapon when sane but asks for it back after going mad? Is it still just to give back a weapon to a madman?⁹ Cephalus admits that returning the weapon does not seem right. And so Socrates can point out that there is at least one case in which the simple equation of justice with “paying back” a loan does not work.

Exit the Father, Enter the Son

Rather than continuing the conversation, Cephalus excuses himself, “for it’s already time for me to look after the sacrifices.”¹⁰ Cephalus may well have a protective sense that it is far too late in life for him to realize that a few strategic sacrifices will not turn him into a just man. At any rate, his son Polemarchus jumps in to defend his father, and Cephalus happily “bequeaths” the argument to his son. Polemarchus accepts the bequest, with the making-light-of-death remark that he will be inheriting other things from his father shortly.

In place of his father, Polemarchus reasons as follows. One cannot be overly legalistic when it comes to justice. His father’s mistake was in seeking one simple rule to follow in all cases. But there are cases and there are cases. Far from being blind to who is who in the world, the just person distinguishes what is owed to friends (to do them good) from what should be done to enemies (to do them harm). Thus Socrates’ hypothetical has an answer: if it is a friend who goes insane and wants his weapon back, then keep it from him for his own good.¹¹

If Cephalus’ views on justice seem fitting for old age, Polemarchus has the ardor of the young for the partisanship in justice. With youthful enthusiasm Polemarchus makes the virtues of friendship and the virtues of justice the same. Socrates in short order will teach him that justice is a different and higher virtue than friendship, that justice in fact operates as a moral brake on what one can do to help friends, family, and country. But it is difficult to side totally with Socrates against Polemarchus. The young man’s starting ethic may be narrow and partisan, but it is intense, militant, and strong. From the moment Polemarchus jumps in to rescue his father, he is the spokesperson for loyalty to one’s own. Polemarchus sees the world for what it often is: a place of competition and conflict. Justice is a fight for your side, and when you fight, you fight to win. But one can hardly win by blindly following the rules when one’s enemies are only too ready to dirty their hands. Justice must be prepared to answer tit for tat, to defend, to retaliate, yes, even to use unjust means if that is necessary to achieve just results. All of this is suggested in the brusque way in which Polemarchus says that he wishes as much harm to his enemies as he wishes well for his friends.

Let me give an example of where I find Polemarchean justice tempting. Some years ago I was taking a course on justice during wartime. Yes, war is hell, my professor acknowledged, but it would be a hell of a lot worse if each side could do whatever it takes to win: bomb cities, deliberately target civilians, leave enemy sailors to drown with their torpedoed ship, release poison gas, engage in nuclear blackmail, plant bombs on commercial air flights, and so on. Of course, obedience to justice during wartime is risky business. To illustrate the risks, the professor deliberately took a hard case: England’s violation of Norway’s neutrality in April 1940 during Word War II. As a neutral, Norway retained the right under international law to continue commercial trade with Germany. Germany depended on this trade for a year-round supply of much-needed iron ore. The ore was mined in Sweden, another neutral. During the winter, when Swedish ports froze, the ore was moved to a warm-water port in Norway, where German ships called for it.

Hitler could have overrun Norway at will but chose not to, since the nation’s neutrality worked to Nazi advantage. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, fumed at having England’s hands tied by the rules of neutrality and finally persuaded his government to mine the Norwegian harbor. Once the mines were laid, Hitler no longer had any interest in respecting Norwegian neutrality. In fact the Nazis had already planned a military invasion of Norway, and they quickly occupied the country with tremendous cost to the lives and property of the Norwegians.

My professor told the story to convince us that England was wrong, and that under the circumstances England had not shown the kind of supreme emergency that might justify violation of international law. He worried in particular that England had imposed a loss of life on the Norwegians that the Norwegians themselves had not chosen. But the story had the opposite effect on me: I thought Churchill a great hero, a practitioner of Polemarchean justice in dire circumstances in which the difference between friends and enemies left no room for neutrals.

World War II was...