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Plato on Democracy and Expertise1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

R. W. Sharples
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In the Gorgias (463aff.) Plato makes Socrates say to Polus that rhetoric is not a skilled art (technê) at all, but one of a number of occupations collectively described as ‘flattery’ (kolakeia) and said to be based on experience. The other examples given are sophistry, cosmetics, and cookery. These practices have no understanding of what they do, or as Plato puts it they can give no account of it (465 a).

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 49 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1994

References

Notes

2. ‘Plato's Political Analogies’ in his own (ed.), Plato, Popper and Politics (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar, ch. 12, reprinted in Vlastos, G. (ed.), Plato, Vol. II (Garden City, 1971), ch. 3Google Scholar.

3. That judgements are best made by the many is asserted by the democratic speaker Athenagoras at Thucydides 6.39.1 (whatever Thucydides' own attitude to the democratic argument).

4. Kahn, Charles, ‘Drama and Dialectic in Plato's Gorgias’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983), pp. 75–121Google Scholar, at 100, rightly emphasizes the divergence between Callicles' involvement in democratic politics and his own personal views. My suggestion is that perhaps Plato saw democracy too as simply the struggle for advantage, contrasting it with the order and harmony he himself desires. It does not follow that Plato's understanding of democracy was correct.

5. ‘Socrates and Athenian Democracy’, Political Theory 11 (1983), 495–516, especially 506–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in M. Burnyeat (ed.), G. Vlastos, Socratic Studies (Cambridge, 1994), and in Sharpies, R. W. (ed.), Modern Thinkers and Ancient Thinkers: The Stanley Victor Keeling Memorial Lectures 1981–1991 (London, 1993), pp. 66–89, especially 78–80Google Scholar.

6. Cf. also the emphasis on the need for wisdom and temperance in the ruler as the crucial political requirement at Laws 4. 712a.

7. Cf. Kahn, , op. cit., pp. 100–1Google Scholar. In the Republic the unerring knowledge that gives the Philosopher Rulers their authority is based on the Theory of Forms. In the Gorgias Socrates' attempt to convince Callicles is based, not on appeals to another world to which only philosophers have access, but on a challenge to Callicles' understanding of this world; where Callicles sees competition, the stronger gaining the advantage over the weaker and rightly so, as the law of nature (483d), Plato's Socrates in this dialogue sees nature as Pythagorean order and harmony (508a). Callicles is not convinced, of course.

8. This understanding, be it noted, would have to be more than the true opinion that the lower class in the Republic achieves under the guidance of the superior understanding of the philosophers; for in Plato's view, as soon as we admit the existence of such a superior class, we remove any justification for consulting the majority of the citizens.

9. It is indeed with the young, especially with the Guardian young, that Books 2 and 3 are concerned. But one can hardly suppose that the education of the ordinary citizens in the Republic is any more open-ended – or if it is, it will only be so because precise accuracy in their opinions is both less attainable and less necessary.

10. If Plato thinks that the Rulers have achieved complete understanding, the possibility of new insights appearing in the dialectical process is indeed logically excluded. (I am grateful to Lindsay Judson for emphasizing this point.) But in that case the Republic seems to have no relevance to any educational context in the world of our experience (see §IV below). It may be that Plato allows that some new insights may be achieved, though not such as to imply significant changes in the overall structure of the state, and not such as to call into question the authority of the Philosopher Rulers. But is he entitled to assume that new insights, if there are any at all, will be so limited in scope?

11. Cf. The Open Society and its Enemies I, Plato (London, 5th ed. 1965), especially pp. 167–8; also 134–5Google Scholar.

12. The key passages are Republic 6. 499c-e on the one hand and Republic 9. 592a-b on the other.

13. Popper (above n. 11), pp. 120–1. Aristotle's rather different approach to political theory, emphasizing (as Malcolm Schofield pointed out to me) ruling and being ruled in turn, may be connected with his general lack of epistemological anxieties.

14. I am grateful to Lindsay Judson for raising this question.

15. The Trial of Socrates (London, 1988)Google Scholar. Cf. Sharples, , ‘On Socratic Reasoning and Practical Activity’ in Jocelyn, H. D. (ed.), Tria Lustra, Festschrift for John Pinsenl (Liverpool, forthcoming), pp. 43–52Google Scholar.