Bust of Pericles

2,714 words

(Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here, Part 11 here, Part 12 here, Part 13 here, Part 14 here, Part 15 here, Part 16 here, Part 17 here, Part 18 here.)

Good Statesmen & Bad (513c-520e)

Socrates claims that Callicles resists his arguments due to “love of the demos,” the people of Athens, a reference to Callicles’ political ambitions. Socrates tries to redirect this ambition, by convincing Callicles that the highest form of life is not the public pursuit of power at the expense of his soul but the private pursuit of wisdom, which is equivalent to the care of his soul.

To overcome Callicles’ resistance, Socrates returns to his earlier arguments with Polus. There are two ways of treating people. One aims to please them. This is flattery. The other aims for the best, to edify or build them up. This is friendship. Socrates asks Callicles if the proper goal of the statesman is to build up the city and the citizens by making the citizens as good as possible. Socrates does not state the alternative, which is to build up the power of the statesman by giving the people whatever pleases them, regardless of whether it is good for them. Socrates now takes it as established that nothing good can come from placing power and money in the hands of bad men. Callicles agrees with this to humor Socrates.

Socrates then states that if he and Callicles were to propose to build something important for the city—like walls, arsenals, or temples—their first duty would be to know themselves, specifically if they actually had the techne of building. But having the techne is not enough. One must be able to prove to the city that one has it by pointing to external signs. Socrates names two: the masters from whom they learned the techne and their portfolio of private buildings. Callicles agrees with all this.

Similarly, if they were to propose advising the city on medical matters, they would need to prove their qualifications based on their education and experience treating patients.

As a general rule, if we want to do something big for the public, we should be able to demonstrate that we have already done similar things on a smaller scale in private. Callicles agrees on this point as well.

Then Socrates applies this argument to Callicles himself, who is “just entering upon a public career.” If Callicles wishes to become a statesman, isn’t it reasonable to ask if he has made any individual citizens better in his capacity as a private citizen? Callicles is unable to cite a single example, so he deflects by accusing Socrates of being quarrelsome. Socrates claims that his question is not quarrelsome but pertinent and essential. Nobody will take Callicles seriously as an improver of the city unless he has some proof that he can improve people in his private dealings.

Callicles becomes sullen and silent, so Socrates moves on to the topic of Pericles, Cimon, Miltiades, and Themistocles. Earlier, Callicles claimed that these former statesmen were superior to the current batch. Socrates responds that if this were true, they would have made the people better. Callicles maintains that they did. To this Socrates asks: So when Pericles began his career, were the Athenians worse than when his career ended? This causes Callicles to pause, because the answer is clearly “no.” At the end of Pericles’ career, Athens was at war, and the people had turned on him.

Of course this is hardly a fair question, because Pericles could have been a fine statesman over a city so corrupt that it could not be improved. In which case, a better question might be: Did Pericles leave Athens better off than if he had never attained power? Couldn’t a statesman in a corrupt city be hailed as great simply for slowing its decline?

When asked for evidence that Pericles had made the Athenians worse, Socrates says that he hears that Pericles made the Athenians “idle and cowardly, chatterers and money grubbers” because he introduced pay for serving in public assemblies. Callicles dismisses this as the sort of thing that a Spartan-sympathizer might say. Of course that doesn’t make it untrue. Socrates does not dispute this. He simply moves on to another argument.

Socrates then likens statesmen to animal trainers. A dog trainer would not be considered good if he received gentle puppies and turned them into vicious curs. The same is true for the trainer of any other kind of animal. By the same token, statesmen should not be considered good if they corrupt the people they rule. Yet, Socrates argues, this is precisely what the great statesman of old did to the Athenians. Their vaunted  careers ended in failure. Pericles was convicted of theft and nearly killed. Cimon was ostracized. Themistocles was exiled. Miltiades narrowly escaped execution. Thus, according to Socrates, they were bad statesmen.

Callicles accepts this. But he maintains that Pericles and company were at least better than the current batch of politicians. Socrates agrees that Pericles, etc. were better at giving the people whatever they wanted. But a true statesman does not give the people whatever they want, regardless of whether or not it is good for them. Instead, he does what is best for them, which often requires saying “no.” Thus, by being better at gratifying the corrupt appetites of the citizens, Pericles and the rest were actually worse for the city than the current politicians, who might preserve some shreds of public virtue simply by being less competent at pandering to public vices.

Then Socrates cashes in on the set of analogies he established in his discussion with Polus. Mistaking Pericles for a statesman is equivalent to mistaking a chef for a trainer. A trainer seeks to improve the health of his client, whereas a chef merely titillates his palate, ruining his health in the process. Likewise, if Pericles were a true statesman, he would have made the Athenians better, not merely helped them satisfy their unhealthy desires:

You sing the praises of those [Pericles, etc.] who threw parties for these people, and who feasted them lavishly with what they had an appetite for. And they say that they have made the city great. But they didn’t notice that the city is swollen and festering thanks to these former leaders. For with no regard for righteousness and moderation, they filled the city with harbors and dockyards, walls and tribute payments, and trash like that.

Socrates also issues a warning. Just as people who have ruined their health will eventually get sick, so will Athens. Moreover, men who ruin their health have a tendency not to blame the chefs who fattened them up but rather whoever is around advising them when they get sick. The same is true of a city in crisis:

So, when that fit of sickness comes on, they’ll blame their advisors of the moment and sing the praises of Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles, the ones who were to blame for their ills. Perhaps, if you’re not careful, they’ll lay their hands on you, and on my friend Alcibiades, when they lose not only what they gain but what they had originally as well, even though you aren’t responsible for their ills but perhaps accessories to them.

This “prophecy” of Alcibiades’ downfall, like the prophecies of Socrates’ trial and execution, have an apologetic purpose. Socrates was characterized as a corrupter of the youth in part because of his relationship with Alcibiades. In the Alcibiades I, however, Plato depicts Socrates as trying to turn Alcibiades away from politics toward philosophy and expressing the fear that the Athenians will corrupt him. In the Gorgias, Socrates also tries to turn Callicles from politics toward philosophy. He predicts that politics could lead Alcibiades and Callicles to bad ends, for when the crisis comes, the Athenians will blame current politicians like Alcibiades and Callicles—who are at best accessories to the crime—not the real culprits, namely past politicians, not to mention the Athenian people themselves.

But can you really establish that Pericles, Themistocles, Miltiades, and Cimon fell specifically due to the corruptions that they sowed? Maybe they fell due to corruptions that were well-established before their time. Moreover, any particular event is the result of many different wills striving against each other. So how much responsibility can one really assign to even the most powerful of statesmen?

Socrates seems to sense that this is an issue. Thus he insists that, “No leader of a city could ever be destroyed unjustly by the city of which he is a leader.” Why? Socrates does not state his reasons. But he seems to be assuming that a true leader necessarily makes the people better, and if they are genuinely better, then of necessity they will not treat their leaders unjustly. Thus he claims that politicians who complain they are being treated unjustly by the people are liars. But again, what if even the best statesman cannot remove long-established corruptions? Would he not, then, be blameless when the people turn against him?

Socrates is also dismissive of sophists who claim to teach justice and then complain that their students are treating them unjustly by not paying their fees. He insists that there is nothing shameful about a doctor or physical trainer asking for payment up front, but if someone who claims to teach justice demands payment up front, he is obviously not confident of his wares. Socrates is probably needling Gorgias here.

Socrates’s argument here seems to presuppose that nothing impedes teaching or doing justice, so if a statesman or a sophist teaches it, it will be learned. He also seems to be presupposing that once justice is learned, nothing impedes people from acting on it. These are highly idealized and questionable assumptions about both politics and human psychology, akin to the idea of a frictionless plane.

Socrates can’t establish the strong causal necessities that he needs. The best he can do is get Callicles to admit that it is “illogical” for statesmen and sophists to claim that they have made people good then complain that they have behaved badly. To which one might say: it may be illogical, but it happens all the time. At this point, Socrates might say, “Yes, but no true statesman, no true sophist, would face such problems.” But this would insulate his theory against refutation only by making it unable to explain what is actually happening.

Socrates belabors this point from 519b to 520e—more than an entire Stephanus page. But beyond being weak, the whole argument is unnecessary. Socrates need not argue that Pericles et al. were bad statesmen because the people turned against them. After all, presumably, there could be bad statesmen that the people never turn against.

Socrates could have argued his point simply by noting that Pericles and the rest were more interested in pleasing the Athenians than making them better people, which should be less difficult to establish, since statesmen face the choice of pandering or edifying every single day.

Socrates as True Statesman  (521a-522e)

Let’s return now to the analogy of the self-indulgent man whose health finally breaks down. Socrates says that he is less likely to blame himself or the panderers who fattened him up long before than the people who are currently “advising” him. These people can fall into two categories: flatterers who tell him what he wants to hear, thus making him worse, and friends who tell him what he needs to hear in order to get better. In this case, such friends would be doctors and physical trainers.

When we move to the political realm, the current advisors who are likely to be blamed when Athens’ corruption finally comes to a head would also fall into two categories: flatterers and friends. But Socrates only names flatterers like Alcibiades and Callicles, who are mere accessories to Athens’ crisis, not the primary culprits. He does not mention friends of the city. These would be true statesmen who looked out for Athens’ genuine interests. Such friends of the city, if they were too vocal, might also become scapegoats, in this case wholly innocent ones. Plato would have us believe that this was the fate of Socrates.

Socrates asks Callicles to tell him how he should serve the Athenians: as a friend trying to make them as good as possible (since Athens is sick, Socrates uses the analogy of a doctor not a trainer) or as a flatter who seeks only to please them. Callicles recommends the latter, because if Socrates doesn’t pander to the public, he’ll get in trouble.

Socrates cuts him off, saying that he has heard it all before. But if he is killed, he will die with his honor intact, rather than sacrificing it to (perhaps) extend his life. Moreover, if his property is taken by unjust men, they will not profit by it, because to profit they must have the wisdom to use it rightly, and unjust men are ipso facto unwise.

Callicles says that Socrates is deluded if he thinks that he can avoid being dragged into court by staying out of the way of wicked men. Socrates says that he is no fool. He knows that he is vulnerable, but he also knows that only wicked men would attack an entirely innocent man like himself. But if it happens, Socrates fully expects to be put to death.

At this point, Socrates comes right out and says that he is a true statesman, indeed the only true statesman in Athens:

I believe that I’m one of the few Athenians—so as not to say I’m the only one, but the only one among our contemporaries—to take up the true political art [alethes politike techne] and practice the true politics. This is because the speeches I make on each occasion do not aim at gratification but at what’s best instead of what’s most pleasant. And because I’m not willing to do those clever things you recommend, I won’t know what to say in court.

Then Socrates appeals to the wonderful set of analogies he established with Polus. Socrates claims that if he is brought to trial in Athens, he will be like a doctor being accused by a confectioner in front of a jury of children. His accuser would claim that he is a bad man because he makes them do unpleasant things like diet, fast, and swallow bitter pills. The confectioner, however, feeds them tasty treats. What could a doctor say in his defense, especially before a jury of appetitive and immature children? The doctor would have to admit that he makes the children suffer. But when he explains that, in the long run, it is for their own good, imagine the tumult in the courtroom! It simply would not fly with the majority of jurors.

The same thing would happen if a true legislator were accused of wrongdoing by a sophist or an orator. Like children, the majority of adults are appetitive, vain, and short-sighted. Therefore, those who pander to such vices will always have the majority on their side. Thus the true legislator will always face a disadvantage when he has to compete for public favor with panderers.

Callicles then asks whether a man who is incapable of taking care of himself in such a situation is admirable.

Socrates says yes, such a man is admirable as long as he has done nothing unjust in word or deed to gods or men. In other words, such a man is admirable if he fails to triumph in court because he has taken care of something far more important, namely the most important thing of all: the cultivation of virtue in his own soul. Socrates would be ashamed if he had not done all he could to cultivate virtue. He would be ashamed to be put to death for failing to care for his soul. But he would not be ashamed to die because of his inability to pander to others at the expense of his own integrity. For no rational and courageous man is afraid of death. Instead, he is afraid of unrighteousness, which in the aristocratic scale of values is a fate worse than death.