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1. Interpreting Plato Politically
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a. practical obstacles: moving from here to antiquity Critical political discourse arises amid geographies of power, even if it is not entirely determined by them. To understand Plato’s conception of the political art, we need to account for what differentiates his era and our own. After all, enormous gaps in time, space, and arrangements of human power separate Plato and the Athenian democracy of his time from the technologically advanced capitalist democracies of today. Five major conditions in ancient Athens pointedly mark the contrasts: (1) The Athenian polis, like every ancient society of the Mediterranean, condoned legally unequal statuses for its major social groups. It accepted slavery as a social fact and excluded women from its political life. More than half of the adult inhabitants of Athens lacked the full rights of Athenian citizenship. (But then, less than half of the eligible citizens of the United States vote in presidential elections, and much smaller proportions do so in state and local elections.) (2) Although Athenian citizens sanctioned social customs by practicing religious rituals, religion did not signify circumscribed sets of beliefs or doctrines. For ancient Athenians, monotheism was unknown, and their polytheism was associated with gods of particular city-states. (3) The prominent mode of economic production was precapitalist—artisanal and agricultural, one I N T E R P R E T I NG P L ATO P O L I T I C A L LY 18 settings 1. The belief that such a chasm between ancient and modern ethics exists, and the attendant nostalgia for ancient virtue, has been encouraged most recently by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue. For a more detailed analysis of that book, see my review in Telos, 233–40. 2. Of course, a principal author of the American Constitution of 1787 defended it by praising the way it avoided the ills of “democracy.” Ironically, however, the most widely shared idea of democracy today signifies the Madisonian version of a nondemocratic republic. supported by slave labor. Markets were radically local—hardly global—even though some trade occurred between city-states. (4) Oral practices and traditions provided the primary means for sustaining and preserving culture . Many citizens were well educated, but most were illiterate. Persons, not technologies, transmitted information and knowledge between individuals. (5) Their democracy was direct. Ordinary citizens operated the major and minor levers of political power: at the local level, in the deme assemblies; in the assembly, council, and courts for the polis as a whole. Insofar as specific citizens acted on behalf of the polis, their elevated authority resulted mostly from voluntary and/or aleatory procedures—not from electoral representation . Democratic institutions did not rely on election as the legitimate means for enabling citizens to exercise political power directly; indeed, citizens regarded elections as effectively oligarchic. When it comes to comparing the political practices, ethical norms, or democratic character of ancient and contemporary societies, however, no unbridgeable chasm separates the two.1 Although the question of which society is more democratic does not have a simple answer, “democracy” could be said to define the political identity of each society—even as each actualized radically imperfect approximations of democratic ideals.2 The practical obstacles that face a cogent evaluation of Plato’s political thought loom large, but qualifying our observations of ancient society by noting them does not make translations of ancient thought into modern contexts impossibly difficult . More imposing conceptual obstacles stem from the prevailing recent interpretive perspectives on Plato and his dialogues. b. interpretive obstacles 1. textualism and contextualism Over the past twenty years, the issue of how to interpret Plato’s dialogues (and, a fortiori, Plato’s conception of the political art) has become a major [3.17.28.48] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 16:49 GMT) interpreting plato politically 19 3. E. N. Tigerstedt, Interpreting Plato; Charles L. Griswold, ed., Platonic Writings— Platonic Readings; James Klagge and Nicholas D. Smith, eds., Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogues: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary Volume, 1992 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Gerald A. Press, ed., Plato’s Dialogues: New Studies and Interpretations; Francisco J. Gonzalez, The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies. 4. For applications of the interpretive perspective of analytical philosophy to understanding Plato, see the work of Gregory Vlastos, Terence Irwin, Richard Kraut, Gregory Santas, Julia Annas, and Alexander Nehamas, to name a notable few—especially the recent (and interesting) incarnations of this interpretive perspective, namely those of Nehamas, The Art...