Digressions&Impressions

On Plato's Ship of State Analogy

There is the ship-owner, larger and stronger than everyone on the ship, but somewhat deaf and rather short-sighted, with a knowledge of sailing to match his eyesight. [1] The sailors are quarreling among themselves over captaincy of the ship, [2] each one thinking that he ought to be captain, [3] though he has never learn that skill…[4] On top of which they say it can’t be taught. In fact, [5] they’re prepared to cut to pieces anyone who says it can….[6] They beg him [the ship-owner] and do everything they can to make him hand over the tiller to them. [6*] Sometimes, if other people can persuade him and they can’t, they kill those others or throw them overboard. [7] Then they immobilize their worthy ship-owner with drugs or drinks or by some other means, and take control of the ship, helping themselves  to what  it is carrying. [8] Drinking and feasting they sail in the way you expect people like that to sail... [9] If someone is good at finding them ways of persuading or compelling the ship-owner to let them take control, [10] they call him a real seaman, a real captain, and say he really knows about ships. [Numbers added to facilitate exposition.]—Republic, 488a-d, translated by G. Ferrari.

There are at least ten criticisms of direct democracy in the famous comparison of the role of philosophy in a popular democracy to the captaining of a ship. Before I get to to those, in his notes, Ferrari suggests that 'the people' are likened to the ship-owner. This makes initial sense because they are, in some sense, the largest and strongest group. But I think it is more likely that this refers to the propertied classes (or gentlemen); after all, (a) the property of the shipowner is emphasized throughout the analogy, and (b) that the property can be seized by the masses. Even if (c) one reads the worthy (γενναῖος) as ironical, it makes more sense as a reference to the propertied than the people. This has additional benefit of making clear what I think of a more subtle point of Plato's: that a democracy also stultifies the propertied--they grow attached to goods not truth/virtue.

Okay, I think we can we summarize the ten criticisms as follows:

1. Democracy generates dissensus.
2. Self-rule generates overconfidence in each of us.
3. The members of the demos lack [distinctive] political expertise.
4. The people* deny the very existence of [distinctive] political expertise.
5. The masses threaten or kill anybody who claims intellectual superiority.
6. Everybody (is encouraged to) want(s) to rule. --> [6*]  This can generate murderous conflict.
7. The lower classes foment revolutions and steal property of others.
8. With the people in control there is much rudderless pleasure.
9. The majority are susceptible to flattery and demagogues.
10. The masses call demagogues 'skilled.'

This calls for some comment.

On [1] that direct democracy generates dissensus is so because everybody can have a say and be in control and (so?) [6] everyone, who will have different views, wants to be in control. While there is an important point lurking here -- that people adjust their desires to what's possible --, as stated this is implausible. But all Socrates needs for the analogy to work is that sufficient people want to be in control. And that seems more plausible. It's interesting that Plato thought that the  practice of direct democracy revealed the fact of pluralism. (Max Weber thinks this is a product of modernity and advanced division of labor.) In Plato this pluralism seems to be the product of the diversity and inconstancy of human desire/appetite [see 8] as such and the lack of regulation of these in a commercial democracy such as Athens.

On [2] that self-rule generates overconfidence in each of us is probably too strong. There are risk averse people. But that ruling, without external constraint (other states' power, etc.) creates overconfidence in some sense is not altogether implausible. Plato would have been able to point to the disastrous expedition to Syracuse as evidence.

Let's spot Socrates 3-4 for the sake of argument (although I return to these below). Obviously a friend of direct democracy or sortition would think this question-begging. (That's why I added 'distinctive.') On [5] Plato could fairly point to the trial of Socrates. Friends of direct democracy might argue (a la I.F. Stone) that the case of Socrates was the exception rather than the rule. On [6* & 7] much of the history of Greece as relayed by Herodotus and, especially, the (aristocratic-leaning) Thucydides, suggests an eternal return of local civil wars among the rich and poor. Interestingly enough, Athens seems to have been the relatively stable exception (presumably because the poor were subsidized by income from imperial tributes).+

In recent times, Plato's observations on [9-10] seem most prescient and relevant again. (Ahead of Trump's election, Jason Stanley drew on Madison and Plato -- but from Book VIII -- when describing the dangers of demagogues in the NYT; recall my responses here and here.]) The  implications of [10] are the most interesting. Because while the core idea seems to be that the many deny the very existence of expertise in statesmanship [3-4], a demagogue can persuade them that a kind of ersatz-political craft is, in fact, the real thing. And while the rejection of expertise is bad enough, the embrace of fake-skill as the real thing corrupts -- presumably by undermining trust and by generating confusion about what it is. -- the very idea of expertise.

That is, the true skill of a demagogue consists in overturning pre-existing opinions. And this also points to the demagogue's true danger: he undermines the habits of thoughts and reasonable expectations for the worse (by [recall]) making everybody complicit in a reign of falsity.  Okay, with that in mind let me sum up by way of a new presentation of [1-10]:

• [1] Direct democracy = dissensus [disorder/disunity].
• [2] Democracy generates overconfidence in each of us [reign of false].
• [3] The people lack of expertise [reign of false].
• [4] deny the very existence of political expertise [reign of false].
• [5] They threaten or kill anybody who claims intellectual superiority [disorder/anarchy].
• [6] Everybody wants to rule [disorder].
• [7] The masses ferment revolutions and steal property of others [disorder].
• [8] With the masses in control there is much rudderless pleasure [disorder].
• [9] The masses are susceptible to flattery and demagogues [reign of false].
• [10] The masses call demagogues ‘skilled’ [reign of false].

If we abstract from the details, all of Socrates's criticisms of direct democracy in the ship of state analogy can, then, be boiled down to two: (i) it generates disorder/disunity and (ii) a reign of the false (that is, lack of virtue). (Maybe that's too reductionistic; [5-6] both also predict murder and theft and these are, presumably, also bad simpliciter.)

So, first, in the ship of state analogy, Socrates presupposes some empirical facts about moral psychology of populations in and the normal functioning of direct democracy. And, second, Socrates also presupposes that (i) order/unity and a (ii) reign of truth are proper ends of statecraft.** Obviously, much of the Republic is devoted to arguing for these presuppositions and this post is not the place to scrutinize them.

The pressing question is how much the distinctive institutions of modern liberal democracy -- separation of powers, representative democracy, disestablishment of religion, wider franchise, the establishment of compulsory mass education, the abolition of slavery -- address Plato's challenge, or have made matters worse.

UPDATE: For a correction to this post see this digression of 21/10/2021.

 

On 'History as Historians' do it?

There is a kind of low-level gripe one hears among so-called 'contextual' historians of philosophy that have found a home in professional philosophy departments. These 'contextualists' are often trained in HPS programs or are inspired by the so-called Cambridge school of intellectual history associated with names such as Quentin Skinner and John Pocock (neither at Cambridge now). The gripe goes something like this: professional philosophers that do history of philosophy are not really doing history as historians understand this.* Now, there is a sense in which the gripe is trivially true: whenever professional philosophers produce 'history of philosophy' -- and this has astonishing diversity in methods and products -- it is almost never intended to meet the standards of professional historians; if they are not writing for each other, such historians of philosophy in philosophy departments write for fellow philosophers.  But the gripe is also based on some very dubious commitments. I offer five considerations to substantiate the claim in the previous sentence.

Herodotus and the Economists

Artabanus, you define these matters reasonably. But do not fear everything, nor take account of all alike; If you wanted to take everything equally into account on every occasion that happens, you would never do anything; it is better to do everything boldly and suffer half of what you dread than to fear all chances and so never suffer anything. But if you quarrel with whatever is said yet cannot put forth a secure position, you must be proved as wrong on your part as he who holds the contrary opinion. In this both are alike: how can someone who is only human know where there is security? I think it is impossible. You see what power Persia has attained. Now if those kings who came before me had held such opinions as yours, or if they had not held them but had had advisers like you, you would never have seen our fortunes at their present height; but as it is those kings ran the risks and advanced them to this height. Great successes are not won except by great risks. So we will do as they did; (Herodotus, The Histories, Book 7, 50.2-4)

Modern economics teaches that great returns are the reward for taking greater risks. So, at first glance it seems that the Persian King, Xerxes, speaks like a modern economist. Given that he has an appetite for glory, he is willing to place bold bets and forgo the relative security of diversification (as suggested by modern portfolio theory). 

Xerxes anticipates the now standard criticism of standard decision theory; in real life, information is costly and we don't have time to gather it all. More important, in human affairs perfect information is an illusion. In context, Xerxes does not explain why he embraces fundamental uncertainty. Rather than seeing such uncertainty as undermining the very possibility of a decision, it is the grounds for a kind of bold decisionism. 

On a Joke, in an Educated Age

The world needs philosophy more than philosophy thinks. Philosophy is ill, it might be dying, but I am sure that the world (the world, neither a God nor a prophet, but the world) is saying to philosophy: ‘Get up and walk!’ (Alain Badiou 2003a)

I must purify myself. Now for those whose offense lies in telling false stories about matters divine, there is an ancient rite of purification--Homer did not know it, but Stesichorus did. When he lost his sight for speaking ill of Helen, he did not, like Homer, remain in the dark about the reason why. On the contrary, true follower of  the Muses that he was, he understood it and immediately composed these lines:

There is no truth to that story,

You never sailed that lovely ship,

You never reached the tower of Troy

As soon as he completed the poem we call the Palinode ["the recantation,"] he immediately regained his sight. Now I will prove to be wiser than Homer and Stesichorus to this small extent.--Plato, Phaedrus (243a-b). [Translated by Nehemas & Woodruff as reprinted in the Cooper (ed) Plato: Complete Works.]

There is a medical condition, informally known as 'hysterical blindness;'* somebody's physiology and neurology works well, but the patient reports blindness. The syndrome is often induced by stress or an accident (see here on Wikipedia). It's a tricky syndrome to treat for the attending physician because, as Wikipedia,puts it, "attributing physical symptoms to a psychological cause is not accepted by many educated people in western cultures."