The Constitutional Debate

In Plato’s Laws, the Athenian lists seven bases on which people may claim to be worthy to rule others: that they are their ancestors, that they are of higher birth, that they are older, that they are masters and the others slaves, that they are stronger, that they are wise and the others ignorant, and finally, that having been chosen by lot, they are favored by the gods and fortune (690ac). Readers of Plato will associate the sixth claim, of the wise to rule the ignorant, with Socrates. But just how does Socrates argue that the wise should rule the ignorant? To understand Socrates’ contribution to the debate about who should rule, we need first to get a sense of the shape of the debate before Socrates. (The first evidence that Socrates is concerned with the question ‘‘who should rule?’’ may be in the Crito, where the Laws remind Socrates he has always praised Crete and Sparta for being well governed (53a), but this may have been praise for the conformity of behavior in Crete and Sparta to Cretan and Spartan law, rather than for the laws themselves.)

Herodotus puts in the mouths of sixth century Persian nobles who have lately seized power a debate about which form of government - democracy (the rule of many), oligarchy (the rule of a few), or tyranny (the rule of one man) - they should choose (the discussion is a little anachronistic because it refers to fifth century Athenian institutions like the selection of officials by lot and public examinations for officials). The argument for the superiority of democracy to tyranny is that there are no checks on a tyrant, the result of which is that the tyrant becomes arrogant and commits many atrocities; by contrast, democracy’s institutions allow no one that kind of power; instead, in a democracy, all citizens are equal before the law. The argument for the superiority of oligarchy adds to the criticisms of tyranny criticisms of democracy: democracy puts in power ignorant men who are even more arrogant than a tyrant; oligarchy, on the other hand, puts the best men (present company included) in power, and the best men will produce the best policies. The argument for the superiority of tyranny adds to the criticisms of democracy criticisms of oligarchy: oligarchy leads to feuding and bloodshed; further, conflicts within oligarchies and democracies lead to tyranny anyway; finally, if the tyrant is the best, then nothing is better than his government (Histories 3.80-2). Herodotus may have taken these arguments from a sophistic source, perhaps Protagoras, who is said to have written a Peri Politeias (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 9.55) and whose Antilogikai is said by Aristoxenus to have been the source of Plato’s Republic (3.38). (The Herodotus passage’s exhaustive rehearsal of all arguments on all sides supports the attribution to Protagoras’ Antilogikai.)

Common to debates about who should rule is the view that ruling is a privilege the possession of which has to be justified; those who would rule have to show themselves to deserve the privilege of ruling - either in exchange for something they provide or because they are simply worthy of ruling. The giving of justifications for ruling may even precede any debate about or contestation of any leader’s claim to rule. For instance, Homer’s Sarpedon gives a general justification of elite privilege when he explains that aristocrats have the privileges that they do (and common people don’t) because they fight where the battle is fiercest (Il. 12.310-21). The suggestion is that the courage of the aristocrats is both intrinsically good and valuable to the community.

Two kinds of considerations in support of the different forms of government inform the debate as to who should rule. One consideration is the protection of the citizens - so just as democracy promises protection from the whims of one who would place himself above the law, the tyrant too is described as a guardian of the people, whose rule preserves them from the violence of faction and feud. A second consideration is that the ruling individual or group be ‘‘the best.’’ This consideration might be expressed in terms of divine right, as in Homer, by Zeus’ gift of the scepter to the king (Il. 2.100, cf. 7.412, 9.96). Even though these two considerations - providing protection and being superior - usually go together in actual arguments, as long as the content of the superiority is not simply superiority in providing protection, they are quite separate considerations.

The pseudo-Xenophon Constitution of the Athenians is one text that distinguishes superiority in protecting the citizens from some other kind of superiority. The author disapproves of the Athenian constitution because the Athenians prefer the well-being of the inferior at the expense of the superior (chrestoi) (1.1). But he also suggests that it is just for the (inferior) common people to have more than the nobility, on the grounds that it is the common people - that is, the navy rather than the hoplites - who defend Athens (1.2). So his point of view seems to be that it would be best if the intrinsically superior on the one hand had more, and on the other hand, did more by way of protecting Athens. However, since they don’t protect Athens, justice doesn’t demand that they have more; rather, it demands that those who actually protect Athens have more. Still, despite their failure to protect Athens, the ‘‘superior’’ surpass the common people by their many intrinsic merits: they have the least injustice, the most self-restraint and concern for good things (1.5). The Athenians (i. e. common Athenians), for their part, can tell who’s superior and who’s inferior, but they prefer the inferior because the inferior are more useful to them (2.19).

The most remarkable instance of the view that intrinsic superiority entitles one to rule is of course Callicles’ speech in Plato’s Gorgias, which characterizes as ‘‘nature’s justice’’ the rule by the superior (482e-484c). Although Callicles does not explicitly oppose the condition in which the stronger and more capable have a greater share to the condition in which the common good is achieved (he opposes it instead to the condition in which all have a ‘‘fair share’’), his examples of the superiors who by nature’s justice have a greater share are conquerors, raiders, and lions. And the reason the lion is king of the animals is not that he protects them.

Callicles’ is obviously an extreme position, but it is evidence that a party’s intrinsic superiority could be taken as by itself a reason for that party to rule. This may be the sentiment in, for example, Democritus’ pronouncements that it is by nature fitting for the superior to rule (DKB267), that it is hard to be ruled by an inferior (49), and that it is proper to yield to a law or a ruler or someone wiser (47). Alongside this belief in a reason for the superior to rule, Democritus remarks that poverty under democracy is preferable to prosperity under a dictator to the same extent as freedom is preferable to slavery (251); perhaps the thought is that democracy at least limits the extent of an inferior’s power over one. That Democritus is no Calliclean is shown by his advice that his audience not try to acquire power for themselves contrary to the common good (252).

The other consideration in favor of a kind of rule - that it protects the people - is more widely used, and there is usually more to be said about just how a ruler/rule of that kind can or will protect the people. So, for example, in Thucydides’ account of the debate at Syracuse (History of the Peloponnesian War 6.39), the oligarchs contend that the wealthy are best able to rule because they are the least tempted to take the city’s money for themselves, and the democrats counter that the ‘‘demos’’ whose interests are served by democracy includes all the citizens, and that all citizens in a democracy have a fair share - by contrast with the oligarchy, in which the dangers, but not the profits, are shared.

I have documented the use of and emphasized the distinctness of these two considerations in favor of someone’s or some group’s rule in order to bring out Socrates’ distinctive contribution to the debate. By contrast, Leo Strauss argues that the question ‘‘who should rule?’’ arises naturally out of the politically engaged stance of the classical political philosopher, and the answer ‘‘the best should rule’’ arises equally naturally and prephilosophically, and needing the philosopher only to spell out its implications and defend it against objections by ‘‘bad or perplexed men.’’ But this account assumes that ‘‘rule by the best’’ is not a controversial ideal. Yet the interpretation of‘‘best’’ is seen to be a matter of contention in Thucydides’ Syracusan debate. And the democrats in Herodotus’ constitutional debate do not even try to claim on behalf of democracy that the demos are the best.

In the constitutional debate, the alternatives for rule - by the many (the poor), the few (the rich or historically rich), or one man - are idealizations of actual constitutions. It is not as if Socrates can argue in favor of rule by the wise by pointing to or idealizing some existing constitution in which the wise rule. Yet to make a case for rule by the wise, it would seem necessary to address the claims to rule of the wealthy, the nobly born, the military, and so on. In the Republic, when Plato does describe and argue for the superiority of a constitution in which the wise rule, he helps himself to the conception of a ruler who is motivated to rule because his ruling is necessary rather than because ruling is something fine or good (347cd, 520e-521a) and whose rule is justified by his qualifications. There has been a quiet revolution between the idea of rule as privilege, claim to which requires justification, and this idea of rule as a job the performance of which calls for certain qualifications. The question ‘‘who should rule?’’ has come to depend on the question ‘‘what does the job of ruling demand?’’ In the next section, I argue that Socrates takes the conception of ruling as a job requiring certain skills from contemporary sophists, but that he argues that determining what the requisite skill is depends on the answer to the question ‘‘what is the goal of ruling?’’