Introduction

 

Do views expressed about democracy in The Republic arise out of ‘the totalitarian tendency of Plato’s political philosophy’ (Popper, 1995: 34)?  Do they arise from a view that the many should be ‘obedient to the directives of an elite of Platonic guardians’ (Berlin, 1969: 152)?

 

Or can Plato be saved from the charge of totalitarianism and elitism?

 

The good life of the individual and the perfectibility of crafts and trades

 

Plato says:

 

It is fatal in any job to miss the right moment for action.  The workman must be at the call of his job; his job will not wait till he has leisure to spare for it.  Quality and quality are therefore more easily produced when a man specializes appropriately on a single job for which he is naturally fitted. (Plato, 1973, p. 103, 369)

 

There is a view here of the worker giving themselves over to a particular craft.  Where Marx’s points to the purposive nature of persons, to that distinctly human capability to determine the course of productive activities, Plato evokes the idea of a calling or a vocation, which one does not so much choose but rather by which one is chosen.   Thus Plato says, ‘[N]o two of us are born exactly alike, we have different aptitudes, which fit us for different jobs’ (Plato, 1973, p. 103, 370).

 

To understand Plato’s views here is to understand what has preceded them: his theory of Forms.  Plato view that the good life resides in the individual following one particular sphere of human activity only makes sense when related to his belief that beyond things as they appear here on the earth, in all their changeability, in all their shifting aspects, there are the Forms or Ideas of things: things as they are in reality.  Reality exists, for Plato, not between persons, but must be discovered by those who ‘climb up into the real world’, those who ascend ‘from the world of change into reality’ (Plato, 1973, p. 287, 521).

 

To follow a particular career path involves reaching ever closer to perfection in the conduct of one’s own productive activity.  Living a good life thus involves striving to become the greatest farmer one can be, the greatest builder, and so on.  It is for individuals to live lives in the pursuit of the perfection of their particular craft or profession: it is to attempt to realise here on the earth that perfection which resides in the Forms beyond us.  This pursuit offers us an education in freedom.

 

However, those who lead communities must be concerned not with perfecting a particular craft or skill but rather with perfecting the community as a whole.  So while ‘the best farmers are those who have the greatest skill at farming’, those ‘who have the greatest skill in watching over the interests of the community’ are those whose ‘deepest affection is based on community … interest’, those for whom their ‘own good and ill fortune is completely bound up with that of someone else’ (Plato, 1973, p. 157, 412).

 

The carpenter’s life centres on the task of ever perfecting skills of carpentry, of coming ever closer to the Form of carpentry.  The Guardian’s life centres on the task of ever perfecting community life, of bringing the Republic in its entirety ever closer to the Form of the Good.

 

From the good life of the individual to the specialist school

 

Plato says, ‘[W]e must look for the Guardians who will stick most firmly to the principle that they must always do what they think best for the community’ (Plato, 1973, p. 158, 413).  For those who are called to serve the community, there is a need for an education in the universal.  What is needed for the Guardian is not an education in being a good farmer, weaver, engineer, and so on, but an education in the Good itself. 

 

The many, the workers, are called to a particular task, the Guardians to a universal task.  While anyone might be called to reach the universal form, the Good, not everyone can be so called.  To force an education in the universal, in the Good, upon those who are by aptitude fitted to following particular paths, is to deny them their proper calling.  It is not to awake them to their human freedom but is rather to deny them their freedom.  It is, in short, to subject these individuals to lives of misery. 

 

On this reading, Plato wants all persons to pursue excellence in that sphere of activity their nature has called them to.  For the many, this will be a particular and narrow sphere (farming, building, weaving, and so on); while for the few, this will be the universal sphere (the sphere of governing the just society).  When all persons in a community excel in the sphere they are called to, justice and freedom are realised.  It is not that Plato suppresses or denies justice for the individual; rather, true justice for the many is justice for the one.

 

Towards the good community

 

Both Marx and Plato proceed from the premise that individuals are interdependent.  However, where Marx sees, in the universal reliance of each on all, a basis for the elimination of the division of labour and the development of each individual in a multitude of directions, Plato sees the necessity of a strict division of labour.

 

Of the interdependency of persons, Plato says:

 

‘Society originates … because the individual is not self-sufficient, but has many needs which he can’t supply himself’ (Plato, 1973, p. 102, 369)

 

Plato’s argument for a division of labour rests in his view of harmony.  In the just person ‘simple and moderate desires’ are, Plato insists, ‘guided by reason and judgement and reflection’ (p. 179, 431).  Equally, he claims that there is, in a just state, a ‘natural harmony and agreement between higher and lower’ (p. 180, 432), and: ‘when each of our three classes (businessmen, Auxiliaries, and Guardian) does its own job and minds its own business, that … is justice and makes our city just’ (Plato, 1973, p. 183, 434).

 

To contribute and to belong to a community is to strive to perfect our craft or role within it, and all the more we succeed in perfecting our particular ability or skill all the more social harmony and joy increase.  Thus Plato says of persons in the good community:

 

They will serve splendid cakes and loaves on rushes or fresh leaves, and will sit down to feast with their children … and afterwards they will drink wine and pray to the gods … and enjoy each other’s company. (Plato, 1973, p. 106, 372)

 

The good community moves from the expertise of each to the freedom and joy of all.

 

From the good community to the specialist school

 

An education, which separates young persons and prepares them for their distinct careers, whether they are to become workers or to join the armed forces or to become leaders, ultimately prepares these persons to take up a place in a harmonious community.

 

To separate the young into distinct categorises of learners is not to exclude them from each other; it is, rather, to prepare them for a deeper inclusion into the good community.

 

Plato’s rejection of democracy and negative liberty

 

Plato claims that negative liberty is the defining characteristic of democracy, observing: ‘There is liberty and freedom of speech in plenty, and every individual is free to do as he like’ (Plato, 1973, p. 329, 557).  Democracy, Plato goes on to assert, allows for a ‘verity of models’ of ways of being (p. 330, 557), and ‘has so many possibilities’ (Plato, 1973, p.334, 561). 

 

Democracy, negative liberty and the excesses of desire

 

Democracy gives rise to what Plato terms the ‘democratic character’, that is, a type of person who ‘lives for the pleasure of the moment.  One day it’s wine, women, and song, the next bread and water … There’s no order or restraint in his life, and he reckons his way of living is pleasant, free and happy’ (Plato, 1973, p.334, 561). 

 

So, when Plato tells us that democracy offers liberty he is speaking with irony.  The liberty he speaks of is our freedom to become a slave to our desires.   We do not move from liberty, we live for liberty.  Liberty does not illuminate our way of being in the world; rather, our lives, lives chasing the shadows of desires, are a means for the illumination of liberty.  In short, Plato’s irony is profound: the democratic character is a slave to liberty.

 

Democracy, negative liberty, and tyranny

 

As the democratic character soon comes to be enslaved by the tyranny of passing desires, so the democratic society, which, for Plato (1973, p. 335, 562), is characterised by its ‘excessive desire for liberty at the expense of everything else’, also contains its own negation.  In its thoughtless, reckless lust for liberty, the democratic society, Plato insists, does not allow life thrive but rather reduces life to a means for the flourishing of liberty.  Plato writes: ‘[W]e should expect tyranny to result from democracy, the most savage subjection from an excess of liberty’ (Plato, 1973, p337, 564).

 

What is missing in the negative liberty of the democratic character or society?  Plato suggests that the more this character or society succeeds in amassing liberty the more withered becomes the faculty of judgement and thus harmony.  What matters for both is not distinction and quality of the choices that are created but merely the quantity.

 

Democracy, freedom and the Forms

 

Saxonhouse (1998: 273) refers to those who ‘see elitism in the Platonic theory of forms because the many cannot ascend to a philosophic vision’.  However, Saxonhouse sees more than elitism in Plato’s opposition to democracy.  Instead, Saxonhouse claims that in Plato’s Republic, ‘The conflict between philosophy and democracy is an epistemological one, not only a moral one’ (Saxonhouse, 1998: 274).  Saxonhouse points to the epistemological conflict between Plato’s belief in the absolute Forms and ‘democracy in its love of freedom’ (Saxonhouse, 1998: 275). 

 

This epistemological impasse finds expression in the differences between the concepts of justice and freedom we find in Isaiah Berlin and in Plato.  Let us consider the questions: How am I to live with my fellows?  And from where might I discover which desires and which ways of living might ease the strain and conflict that blights the lives of persons? 

 

Berlin, with his belief in pluralism and democracy, looks for answers in the lived lives of persons (empiricism), and concludes there can be no single or final answers.  Plato, who rejects democracy, looks to the Forms that dwell beyond persons (a metaphysical view), and claims that those with wisdom can come to know how all persons should live.  Berlin claims that any attempt to understand human lives will always lead to conflict and disagreement, to an understanding that there are many ways in which we might live together.  Here knowledge is always contingent, always unfinished.  Plato claims that the attempt to understand human lives must take, as its starting point, not the actual lives of living persons, but rather the Forms which reveal to an individual not a multitude of ways of being but rather the way they should be.  Here knowledge glances upon the eternal, that realm of truth which is not contingent. 

 

Democracy, then, is founded not simply on a different set of values to Plato’s Republic, but far more significantly on an apposing way of knowing values.  A belief in the Forms as a source of all human knowledge is, for Plato, quite inconsistent with a belief in democracy.  It is not merely elitism but more significantly epistemology that is the source of Plato’s rejection of democracy.

 

From the Forms and the rejection of democracy to the necessity of specialist schools

 

For Plato, what is wrong with the inclusive or democratic school is that it values a multitude of ways of learning.  Those who are determined to be become Guardians must be taught to rise from the ‘visible realm’ into the ‘intelligible realm’, in which they will perceive ‘the absolute form of Good’ (Plato, 1973, p. 282, 517). 

 

This is an education not in ways of being but in the way to be.  An individual cannot be simultaneously educated in the universal and the particular.  While some persons require an education which will prepare them for a particular craft or profession, the Guardian requires an education in the universal.  Future leaders require not just different knowledge from those who they will lead, but more significantly, a different way of knowing.  Therefore, not all persons can be educated together in the same educational settings in the same ways.   

 

Here Plato finds an ally in Bertrand Russell who claims: ‘To educate rightly those who are going to be officials … requires special classes for the more intelligent …’ (Russell, 1932: 86).

 

Consider, also, Russell’s arguments against democratic sentimentalism:

 

‘Nothing can be urged against such [‘special’] schools except administrative difficulties and that form of democratic sentiment which has at its source in envy’ (Russell, 1932: 172)

 

And:

 

The error of aristocracy lay, not in thinking some men are superior to others, but in supposing superiority to be hereditary.  The error of democracy lies in regarding all claims to superiority as just grounds for the resentment of the herd. (Russell, 1932: 84)

 

Anyone might be educated to become a leader, but not everyone can be so educated.  Thus, the need for differing forms of education, an educational system with does not insist of forcing all children into the same type of school.  For both Plato and Russell, it is not elitism but epistemology that is at the source of their rejection of an inclusive or democratic educational system. 

 

References

 

Berlin, I. (1969) Two concepts of liberty, in: Four essays on liberty (Oxford, Oxford University Press)

Plato (1973) The republic (trans. H.D.P. Lee, London, Penguin)

Popper, K. (1995) The open society and its enemies (London, Routledge)