Unless … philosophers become kings in the cities or those whom we now call kings and rulers philosophize truly and adequately and there is a conjunction of political power and philosophy … there can be no cessation of evils … for cities nor, I think, for the human race. —Plato, Republic V.473c11–d61
Translations from Plato draw on those in John Cooper, ed., Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997).
I. Introduction
The passage I have chosen as my epigraph is perhaps the most famous in all of Plato. Some readers may think that further analysis of why Plato thinks that philosophers should rule is unnecessary, because they already sufficiently understand why Plato believes that this claim is true, and thus already adequately understand Plato's political philosophy, at any rate in this respect (at least around the time of the Republic). Similarly, some may think that they already adequately understand Aristotle's reactions to such claims and, more generally, his views on the relation between philosophic understanding and good or just political rule. I hope that this essay may, at least in part, help to suggest that such confidence is misplaced.
Plato's and Aristotle's positions on these and related issues are quite complex and depend, sometimes in unobvious ways, on other aspects of their views. Nor would it be safe to assume that each held the same view, with the same foundations, throughout his career. A proper examination of these topics would require much more than a single essay. Here I shall confine my discussion mostly to Plato's Republic, in which he first makes the claim that philosophers should rule, and a relatively unknown work by Aristotle, the Protrepticus. Although, as I will discuss in more detail in Section III, the extant text of the Protrepticus is not complete, I have two reasons for focusing on it. First, it is clearly an early work that precedes Aristotle's better known and more extended treatments of these issues in the Eudemian Ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Politics. Understanding the Protrepticus will thus help to put Aristotle's later views into context. Second, as I shall argue below, the Protrepticus displays interesting similarities and dissimilarities to the views of Plato's Republic. Even limiting my analysis to these two works, my discussion will be somewhat exploratory and programmatic, but I hope to raise some lines of thought that may merit further reflection.
II. Plato's Republic
Plato has, I think, at least three related but distinct sorts of reasons for his claims about the political importance of philosophic understanding in the Republic. First, there is a motivational claim. If those who are to govern are “lovers of ruling” (Rep. VII.521b4–5), they will not seek the good of the whole city, but will pursue political office simply for their own benefit, and will thus engender civic strife. Only philosophers have a life that they prefer so strongly to the political life that they “look down on” that life (Rep. VII.521b1–2, 520e–521b). Thus, only philosophers, Plato thinks, will seek the good of the whole city when they rule. Second, the question of who should rule notoriously leads to bitter, intractable, and destabilizing conflicts between social and economic elites and the masses. Rule by philosophers, Plato at least sometimes suggests, can forestall such controversy. All citizens can be brought to accept that the rule of philosophers is in their own interest (Rep. VI.499d–501e).
Neither of these claims is unproblematic, but I shall turn to Plato's best known justification for the rule of philosophers, and this is epistemic.2
Whether Plato's arguments in the Republic give sufficient reason for philosophers to rule is a matter of long-standing scholarly dispute; for worries about the persuadability of the nonphilosophic classes, see, e.g., Josiah Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 236–40.
If he [the philosopher] should come to be compelled to put what he sees there [in the realm of the Platonic Forms] into people's characters, whether into a single person or into a populace, instead of shaping only his own, do you think he will be a poor craftsman of moderation and justice and all forms of ordinary popular virtue? … [N]o city will ever find happiness until its outline is sketched by painters who use the divine model…. [After they wiped clean the city and the characters of men] they would sketch the outline of the constitution…. And I suppose that, as they work, they would look often in each direction, towards the natures of justice, the fine, moderation, and the like, on the one hand, and towards those they are trying to put into human beings, on the other. And in this way, they would mix and blend the various ways of life in the city until they produced a human image based on what Homer too called “the divine form and image.” … And they would erase one thing, I suppose, and draw in another until they had made characters for human beings that the gods would love as much as possible. (Rep. VI.500d5–501c3)
Socrates tells the philosophers who have emerged from the Cave and are contemplating the Forms:
[E]ach of you in turn must go down to live in the common dwelling place of the others and grow accustomed to seeing in the dark. When you are used to it, you will see vastly better than the people there. And because you have seen the truth about the fine, the just, and the good, you will know each image for what it is and also that of which it is the image. Thus, for you and for us, the city will be governed, not like most cities nowadays, by people who fight over shadows … but by people who are awake rather than dreaming. (Rep. VII.520c1–d1)
Similarly, he asks what is meant to be an easy question:
Then whom will you compel to become guardians of the city, if not those who have the best understanding of these things through which a city is best governed? (Rep. 521b7–9)
I cannot here consider the possible development of Plato's views in later dialogues such as the Statesman and the Laws. But the following are some of the most basic questions about the Republic's position.
For exactly which political functions is philosophic knowledge required and for what is it required? To begin, such knowledge seems required for, to put it as neutrally as possible, the goodness or correctness of political decisions. But, first, which decisions? Is it required only for the great, and presumably infrequent, task of designing de novo the constitution of a new city? Or does the need extend more deeply than that and reach to revising the constitution (in perhaps less than fundamental ways), passing laws, making decrees, issuing judicial verdicts, or making the sorts of decisions entrusted to magistrates by the constitution?3
For a general background, see Raphael Sealey, The Athenian Republic (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1987), 32–52; and Richard Bodéüs, The Political Dimensions of Aristotle's Ethics (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1993), 63–66.
The requirement for philosophic knowledge might be justified synchronically or diachronically; it might be justified by its overall effects or, more narrowly, purely for its epistemic features. True belief, for example, might do as well as philosophic knowledge as long as it remains, but true belief is more precarious and may be undermined over time. Knowledge might do better than true belief in inhibiting bad nonrational motivations, but this might only be an indirect effect of the features that make knowledge knowledge.
In the Republic, in my view, Plato requires that a virtuous person possess philosophic knowledge and that virtuous actions be based on such knowledge.4
Christopher Bobonich, Plato's Utopia Recast (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 42–46.
It would, in principle, be open to Plato to hold an analogous position with respect to political functions. On this view, a city governed by philosophers or a constitution and laws that are the expression of philosophic knowledge would be better, more correct, or more just simply on similar perfectionist grounds. This line of thought is not totally absent from Plato: in the Republic, in order for the city to possess the virtue of wisdom, its rulers must possess knowledge (Rep. IV.428b–429a). Since only someone who knows at least some Forms can possess knowledge (Rep. V.475d–480a), the rulers must know at least some Forms and thus must be philosophers. This is not, however, the primary thrust of Plato's remarks in the Republic. In the passages quoted above, especially 520c and 500d–501c, what the metaphors draw our attention to is the idea that mistakes will be made by nonphilosophers, and Plato seems to suggest that on any occasion of decision, the nonphilosopher is very likely to go wrong. Philosophic knowledge is needed for ruling in order to avoid actual substantive error.
The sort of knowledge that Plato stresses in the passages quoted above is, in the first place, knowledge of what the just, the fine, and the good are. Having such knowledge requires having knowledge of the corresponding Forms, and at least a necessary condition of knowing a Form is knowing its definition. Among the Forms, the Form of the Good has a special place: “once they have seen the Good itself, they must each in turn put the city, its citizens, and themselves in order, using it as their model” (Rep. VII.540a8–b1). Such knowledge of the Form of the Good will require, in some way or another, having knowledge of many (perhaps all) of the Forms, especially those concerned with values and virtue.5
Plato claims that a person can acquire knowledge of the Form of the Good only after acquiring knowledge of some other Forms (Rep. VII.517b–c and VII.532a–b), and Rep. 517b7–9 and 532a5–b2 may suggest that knowledge of all other Forms is required. But is the necessity of knowing some or all of the other Forms if one is to know the Form of the Good more than just a psychological necessity? I cannot discuss this question here, and I think that my other claims are consistent with either an affirmative or a negative answer to this question. For argument that it is more than just a psychological necessity and that what is required is knowledge of all other Forms, see Gail Fine, Plato on Knowledge and Forms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 95–116 (which includes references to other views); on the need to know the Forms of the virtues, see Terence Irwin, Plato's Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 272–73.
Indeed, it is such ordering of individual characters that is the main way by which the city itself is to be ordered. The philosopher alone has a grasp of the “single target” at which all the citizens' actions, including their political actions, are to aim (Rep. VII.519c). This goal, at its most general, is to make the city as happy as possible, and since virtue is vastly the most important factor in happiness, this will involve making the citizens virtuous. Moreover, since virtue requires wisdom and this requires knowledge and, in particular, knowledge of the Forms, the philosopher will aim at producing a philosophic character in those capable of it, and doing what he can to improve the characters of the rest of the citizens. Thus, the knowledge that Plato stresses as justifying the rule of philosophers is, in the first place, knowledge of the Forms, of the goodness of such knowledge, and of the sort of education necessary to inculcate it.
This is not to say that this is the only kind of knowledge that helps the philosopher to govern. The philosopher's knowledge of the Forms provides the basis for the laws and institutions he will introduce; and knowledge, e.g., of the Form of Justice (that is, knowledge of what justice is, which requires knowledge of the definition of its essence) will in some cases improve judgments about the extent to which possible or actual laws or institutions are just (cf. Rep. VI.484c–d, VII.520c–d). But it is, I think, quite important to see that Plato does not seem to believe that it requires expert philosophic judgment based on knowledge of the Forms to make correct judgments about a wide variety of laws. He dismisses the need for philosophic judgment on the part of those who specify laws about “market business, such as the private contracts people make with one another in the marketplace, for example, or contracts with manual laborers” (Rep. IV.425c10–d1), and he criticizes those who
pass laws on the subjects we have just been enumerating and then amend them, and always think they will find a way to stop cheating on contracts and the other things I mentioned, not realizing that they are really just cutting off a Hydra's head…. [T]he true lawgiver should not bother with that form of law or constitution, either in a badly governed city or in a well-governed one—in the former, because it is useless and accomplishes nothing; in the latter, because anyone could discover some of these things, while the others follow automatically from the ways of life we have established. (Rep. IV.426e4–427a7)
Plato is not claiming that getting these sorts of laws right is easy merely for philosophers who have knowledge of the Forms; the foregoing passage occurs before the introduction of genuine philosophers, and what Plato is confident about here is rather the capacities of those who have been raised in the entirely nonphilosophical, musical education prescribed for those who will be auxiliaries. People who receive such an education will be able, without recourse to philosophers or philosophic knowledge, to make correct judgments about these sorts of laws and institutions. Philosophic knowledge, even philosophic knowledge about value, is not needed for correctness about these matters.
Similarly, Plato assumes that basically everyone can see that things such as embezzlement, theft, and betrayal of comrades are unjust (Rep. IV.442e–443b). Indeed, much more basic aspects of the constitution do not seem to require philosophic knowledge based on knowledge of the Forms. Plato directs his arguments for the three great innovations of the Republic's ideal city—the education of women, the community of women and children, and the rule of philosophers—toward people who have no knowledge of Forms, and do not seem even to have true beliefs about the content of the definition of, e.g., the Form of Justice.6
The dialectical argument at the end of Republic Book V (474c–480a) does not seem to require that the opponent ever acquire true beliefs as to the content of the definition of any Form. (Whether it is possible to have any beliefs about Forms is controversial; for some discussion, with references, see Bobonich, Plato's Utopia Recast, 58–66.) Plato does not say that this dialectical argument should be presented to the nonphilosophic citizens of the just city. Indeed, it is unclear whether Plato thinks that most people could accept the distinction between Forms and sensible particulars; at Rep. VI.493e2–494a1, he seems to deny that most people could “in any way tolerate or accept the reality of the fine itself, as opposed to many fine things, or the reality of each thing itself, as opposed to the corresponding many.” What he may think most effective at persuading most people to accept the rule of philosophers is not any epistemological argument, but rather the thought that philosophers, as Plato describes them, are properly motivated: they are “neither harsh nor envious” (Rep. VI.500a4–5; cf. Tim. 29d7–30a7). Socrates concludes his argument about whether most people can be persuaded to accept philosophers' rule only by expressing the hope (in the face of Adeimantus's greater skepticism) that “they will be shamed into agreeing with us, if nothing else” (Rep. VI. 501e6–502a2).
Where else might a philosopher's knowledge be required?7
It is worth noting that, even with respect to the mathematically-laden topic of the appropriate rhythms to use in the music that forms part of the education in the just city, Plato does not think that a philosopher's knowledge is needed to reach a correct determination: at Rep. III.400b–c, Socrates defers to the judgment of Damon on this question.
But is this really a good example of the intrinsic necessity of theoretical knowledge for good rule? The knowledge in question seems simply instrumental to the further end of having a stable and fit population, and such mathematical knowledge may not seem to involve any sort of grasp of intrinsic value. Such use of mathematical knowledge seems merely to be a case of the instrumental usefulness of mathematics for practical purposes (at least from our point of view). Strikingly, however, it is precisely this need to make such cosmological-astronomical calculations which are relevant to procreation that is one of the main reasons that some Neo-Platonists think that the rule of philosophers is necessary. But on their views, the link to philosophic knowledge of value is clearer, since apprehension of the relevant mathematical structures is, in itself, an apprehension of intrinsic value. (Although it may well have been for Plato himself.)8
See Bobonich, Plato's Utopia Recast, 206–9, on Plato's views. On the great importance for political purposes that the Neo-Platonists attribute to the philosopher's (i) mathematical and astronomical knowledge, and (ii) the knowledge, alluded to at Rep. VI.500e, of what good characters are and of how they are produced, see Dominic O'Meara, Platonopolis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 87–105, 135.
The other main reason the Neo-Platonists think that the rule of philosophers is necessary is also clearly derived from the Republic. A philosopher's knowledge is required for inculcating the “political virtues” in the character of the citizens of the just city, but the inculcation of such virtues is not the ultimate end of the city or its system of education. Acquiring the political virtues is required for dealing with the ordinary demands of life, for interacting with others, and for fostering the control of desires and emotions necessary for undertaking rigorous intellectual inquiry. Nonetheless, according to the great Neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus (204–270 a.d.), the political virtues must be left behind when one attains the greater, more divine virtues associated with the cognition of purely intelligible objects:
[Such a person] will not make moderation consist in that former observance of measure and limit [in political virtue], but will altogether separate himself, as far as possible, from his lower nature and will not live the life of the good man that political virtue requires. He will leave that behind, and choose another, the life of the gods: for it is to them, not to good men, that we are to be made like.9
Plotinus, Ennead Book 1, chap. 2, sec. 7, “On the Virtues.” I quote, with slight modification, the translation in A. H. Armstrong, ed., Plotinus I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989); to facilitate reference, I use the section numbers in Armstrong's edition. For related discussion, see John Dillon, “An Ethic for the Late Antique Sage,” in Lloyd Gerson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 313–35; and David Sedley, “The Ideal of Godlikeness,” in Gail Fine, ed., Oxford Readings in Philosophy: Plato 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 309–28.
To return to Plato himself and summarize my previous discussion, for Plato what is of central importance in justifying the need for philosophers to rule is the philosopher's knowledge of virtue. This is necessary not because such knowledge is the only way of getting right the evaluation of particular actions or laws; rather, it is necessary because it involves a correct grasp of the central element of happiness, that is, of what is the best kind of character for humans to have. This is, in the first place, a correct grasp of the nature and value of philosophic understanding, and such a grasp requires philosophic knowledge itself.
There are lines of argument that I shall now sketch, without endorsing, by which one might try to show a more pervasive need for philosophic knowledge. One might hold, for example, that evaluation of particular actions, laws, or institutions for correctness can only be reliably done on the basis of philosophic knowledge. One way to develop such a view would involve the claim that actual mistakes with serious consequences will be made unless such evaluation is carried out on the basis of philosophic knowledge, for example, via knowledge of the definitions of value Forms. Or even if the application of such definitions (or of high-level principles stating, e.g., necessary and sufficient conditions for something's being just) on the basis of philosophic knowledge is not necessary, it might be that so many factors are relevant to determining the correct verdict in a particular case that highly sophisticated knowledge is required for getting things right. Compare, for example, Plato's dismissal of various economic regulations noted above (Rep. IV.425c–d) with the following explanation of the need for casuistry given by the secretary of the Society of Jesus to the Council of Trent in 1554:
As it is supremely necessary to avoid cheating one's neighbor in business or acting toward him unjustly, so it is extremely difficult to detect when such deception or injustice takes place in commercial dealings. On the one hand, neither Scripture nor the ancient Fathers and philosophers deal with the matter in detail, and on the other, the astuteness of merchants, fostered by their lust for gain, has discovered so many tricks and dodges that it is hardly possible to see the plain facts, much less to pronounce judgment on them…. [F]inally, the matter being a question of morals, only admits of probability, because its nature is such that the least change in circumstances renders it necessary to revise one's judgment of the whole affair…. As Saint Basil well says, “to understand justice calls for a great intellect and a perfect heart.”10
Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 190–91.
Or perhaps more radically, one might think that we simply cannot codify in any useful way general principles about, e.g., justice.11
For a contemporary defense of such a position, see Jonathan Dancy, Ethics without Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); for defenses of such a position both in itself and as an interpretation of Aristotle, see John McDowell, “Virtue and Reason,” The Monist 62 (1979): 13–29; and Martha Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 54–105.
[T]he public articulation of such principles reflects the democratic character of the moral point of view and reveals the illegitimacy of any attempted privatization of moral standards, that is, of any claim by an elite to have a privileged access to moral ideas or to the moral truth.12
Samuel Scheffler, Human Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 12. Nonetheless, as I shall note in Section III, even if it is the case that general ethical or moral principles can be stated, it might be that they cannot be understood or applied without sophisticated theoretical or philosophic knowledge.
Such lines of argument that attempt to show a more pervasive need for philosophic knowledge in ethical and political matters do not, however, form a significant part of Plato's case for the rule of philosophers in the Republic.
Before turning to Aristotle, let me emphasize that I am limiting my discussion of Plato to the Republic. In the later dialogues, there are several lines of thought that might make the need for sophisticated theoretical reflection more pervasive in ethical and political judgments. First, in the Statesman (294a ff.), Plato seems to endorse the uncodifiability, in some sense, of ethical and political principles and to claim that the correction of general rules requires philosophic knowledge. Second, the metaphysics of value in the Statesman and the Philebus suggests that valuable objects, states, or actions are to be understood as those that hit the mean on a continuum of possibilities. If this is combined with the view that value falls off fairly sharply as the mean is diverged from and that sophisticated theoretical reflection is needed for hitting the mean or getting within the narrow band of acceptable divergence, this might show a pervasive need for such reflection. I cannot explore these issues further here, however, and the development of Plato's ethical epistemology is a complicated story.
III. Aristotle
Let us now turn to Aristotle. Aristotle's positions, in works such as the Eudemian Ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Politics, on whether philosophers should rule in a good (or the best) city, and on the relation between political science or statesmanship and philosophy, are surprisingly complex, and not without some apparent tensions. I cannot cover this material adequately in this essay, but would instead like to consider a text of Aristotle that may be able to provide a fresh starting point for the consideration of the rest of his views, yet has received fairly little philosophical attention in the past forty years, the Protrepticus. We have reliable ancient evidence that Aristotle wrote a work with that title which, like other of his earliest works, was not preserved and transmitted in the ancient edition of Aristotle's writings that forms the basis for the standard edition of his works today. A protrepticus logos is a speech or discourse (logos) which aims at turning (trepein) the reader toward (pro) a certain way of living. Starting with the work of the English scholar Ingram Bywater in 1869, there have been scholarly efforts to reconstruct at least large parts of Aristotle's text by drawing upon a work (also called the Protrepticus) written by the Neo-Platonist philosopher Iamblichus (c. 250–330 a.d.), which appears to contain excerpts from Aristotle's own text. Recent scholarship has made a strong case for thinking that we can identify significant parts of this text as Aristotle's own work.13
D. S. Hutchinson and Monte Johnson, “Authenticating Aristotle's Protrepticus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 29 (2005): 193–294. I do not mean to endorse all of their claims, but this article is an extremely valuable contribution. At any rate, I find it very plausible that at least substantial parts of chapters 6–12 of Iamblichus give us reliable evidence for Aristotle's Protrepticus. Much more research is needed, and this includes analysis of the text's arguments.
Since the Protrepticus is familiar to relatively few and is not as easily available as most of Aristotle's other works, I shall begin with a fairly extensive quotation:
[T]hose who are to be good doctors or trainers must be experienced about nature, so good lawmakers too must be experienced about nature—and indeed much more than the former. For the former are only producers of virtue in the body, while the latter, being concerned with the virtues of the soul and claiming to teach about the happiness and misery of the city, need philosophy much more. For just as in the other productive arts the best of their tools were discovered from nature (for example, in the builder's art, the plumbline, the ruler, and the compass) … and it is by reference to these that we determine what is to the senses sufficiently straight and smooth—in the same way, the statesman must have certain norms [horous] taken from nature itself and from the truth, by reference to which he will determine what is just, what is fine, and what is advantageous. For just as there [in the other productive arts] these tools surpass all others, so too the finest law is the one that most accords with nature. But no one who has not done philosophy and come to know the truth is able to do this. And in the other arts people do not take their tools and their most exact reasonings from the primary things[;] … they take them from what is second or third hand or at a distant remove, and take their reasonings from experience; whereas the imitation of the exact things themselves [autôn tôn akribôn] is only for the philosopher, for the philosopher's vision is of these things themselves, not of imitations. So just as no one is a good builder who does not use a ruler nor any other such tool, but takes his measure from other buildings, so too presumably if someone either gives laws for cities or performs actions by looking at and imitating other human actions or constitutions, either of Sparta or Crete or of any other such city, he is neither a good lawmaker nor a virtuous man; for an imitation of what is not fine cannot be fine, nor can an imitation of what is not divine and secure in nature be immortal and secure. But it is clear that the philosopher is the only producer to have laws that are secure and actions that are correct and fine. For he alone lives looking at nature and at the divine, and, just like a good helmsman, ties the first principles of his life onto things which are eternal and steadfast, drops his anchor there and lives as his own master. So then, this knowledge is contemplative [theôretikê], but it provides us with the ability to do all that we do in accordance with it. For just as sight makes and shapes nothing (for its only function is to judge and to make clear each visible thing), but enables us to act in accordance with it and gives the greatest help towards our actions [so contemplative knowledge helps us towards actions]…. (Protrepticus 84.11–86.4, B46–51)14
Translations from the Protrepticus draw on Ingemar Düring, ed., Aristotle's Protrepticus (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1961) and the forthcoming translation by D. S. Hutchinson and Monte Johnson. I cite the text of the Protrepticus first (e.g., 84.11–86.4 above) by the page and line numbers of Iamblichus, Jamblique Protreptique, ed. Édouard des Places (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1989) and then by fragment numbers assigned by Düring (e.g., B46–51 above). These Düring numbers are used in what is currently the most accessible translation of Iamblichus into English: Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 2404–16. Whether the words following the ellipsis at the end of the above quotation can be attributed to Aristotle is controversial, but the sense is clear: what has just been said to be true of sight is true of this contemplative knowledge.
How are we to cash out Aristotle's metaphors? To begin, the lawgiver (nomothetês) who has philosophic knowledge of nature and, in particular, of the appropriate norms (horoi) is like a builder who uses the plumbline, ruler, and compass. The use of such tools is necessary because the unaided senses will judge that something is (say) straight, when it is not. Aristotle does not suggest that the senses will dispute over this, or that such disputes would be irresolvable at the level of the senses, although there is nothing to rule it out. The point is worth noting, however, since the need for measurement is not confined to hard cases or those of special difficulty: every time one needs to determine whether something is straight, a ruler must be used. Moreover, there is no suggestion here (unlike, for example, in Plato's Euthyphro) that such measurements get rid of disagreements among all disputants—although they should end disagreements among the experts who use these instruments:
If you and I were to differ about numbers as to which is the greater, would this difference make us enemies and angry with each other, or would we proceed to count and soon resolve our difference this way? … Again, if we differed about the larger and smaller, we would turn to measurement and soon cease to differ…. And about the heavier and lighter, we would resort to weighing and be reconciled…. What subject of difference would make us angry and hostile to each other if we were unable to come to a decision? … [T]hese subjects are the just and unjust, the fine and base, the good and bad. (Euthyphro 7b7–d2)
What exactly, then, according to the Protrepticus, is defective about the rule of nonphilosophers? The passage from the Protrepticus quoted above does claim that only the philosopher acts virtuously. This would apply to political actions too: only the philosopher acts virtuously with respect to politics, and this might be so, even if both the philosopher and the nonphilosopher performed the same type of political actions. But the building analogy seems to go further and appears to suggest that because they do not use the right tools, nonphilosophers will tend to make mistakes and establish laws that would have inferior substantive content. Indeed, if we take the analogy seriously, it seems that the mistakes made by failing to use the proper tools are very significant in that, typically or frequently, the outcome is affected for the worse to a considerable degree. This is, perhaps, especially plausible if many such measurements must be made and matters may only get worse if one starts to use items previously judged straight by the senses to make further determinations of straightness.
The application of these tools, at least by an expert builder, appears to be easy, and Aristotle seems to present such tool use as yielding a decisive answer to any particular question; he shows no concern about vagueness. But the idea that application of these tools is easy does raise some problems. If it is easy, is there a continuing need for philosophers? In the case of tools, it may have been a great intellectual accomplishment to invent the ruler or the plumbline, but it seems that once they have been invented almost anyone can use them. If the application of norms is to continue to require philosophers, it is not sufficient that philosophic knowledge is necessary for deriving, or determining in the first place, what the norms are, nor that such knowledge is necessary for justifying norms or explaining why the preferred candidates are true. Their very application, it seems, must require a philosopher.
This still leaves several important issues undetermined: we are not told, for example, whether what is required is philosophic knowledge expressed in the form of knowledge of definitions, or whether what is necessary is some other intellectual ability. But this idea does, I think, help to explain the significance of a controversial passage in the Protrepticus:
What standard or norm of good things do we have that is more exact than the wise man? (69.27–29, B39)
This cannot mean, as some commentators have worried, that the judgment of a wise man constitutes the goodness or justice of acts or things. Nor need it even mean that the wise person cannot state universal and exceptionless rules or definitions; it may just mean that such rules or definitions cannot be properly used except by a philosopher.
How, then, does the philosopher use these tools? It seems that there are three relevant items: (i) nature, the primary things, or the exact things themselves; (ii) the norms the philosopher “takes from” the items in (i); and (iii) the laws (or institutions or actions) that are judged according to the norms. We are not told exactly how this works, but one perhaps plausible picture is that the norms are something like definitions of justice, fineness, and so on, and the laws are evaluated with respect to whether they satisfy these definitions. Although knowing the exact things themselves, deriving norms from them, and applying these norms to proposed laws or courses of action seem to be distinct activities, Aristotle does not divide them up between two different faculties with distinct objects. (The distinction between “practical wisdom” [phronêsis] and “wisdom” [sophia] understood as separate faculties with their own objects is central to Nicomachean Ethics Book VI—which is identical to Eudemian Ethics Book V—and thus central to Aristotle's ethical theory in the Eudemian Ethics and the Nicomachean Ethics. It is also, I think, what is most distinctive of Aristotle's ethics as opposed to Plato's.)
In the Protrepticus, however, Aristotle is willing to draw a distinction between (1) contemplative knowledge (theôretikê epistêmê) insofar as it grasps the truth about its objects and (2) the ability to act on the basis of this knowledge. Such a grasp of the truth or the “most exact truth” is the function (ergon) of the human being (72.24–25, B65) and the function of virtue itself (74.3–5, B70), but this does not undermine the idea that such knowledge can and should be used to ensure correct action and correct lawmaking.15
At Protrepticus 74.4 (B70), Düring emends, without any manuscript support, “virtue” (aretês) to “soul” (psuchês). I retain arêtes; for the phrase “function of virtue,” see EE II.1.1219a19–20.
In the passage quoted above, Aristotle tells us that
imitation of the exact things themselves is only for the philosopher, for the philosopher's vision is of these things themselves, not of imitations. (85.6–9, B48)
This arguably marks a significant apparent difference between the Protrepticus and Aristotle's thought in the Eudemian Ethics and the Nicomachean Ethics. In the common book, EN VI.7, Aristotle holds that
it would be strange to think that political science or phronêsis is the loftiest kind of knowledge, since man is not the best thing in the world…. [W]isdom is knowledge, combined with intelligence, of the things that are highest by nature. (1141a20–22, 1141b2–3)16
Translations from Aristotle, other than from the Protrepticus, draw on those in Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985).
This will be true, even if we were to grant that some kind of wisdom concerning what is best for human beings is possible. In contrast, it is at least plausible to think that in the Protrepticus, the knowledge that the philosopher uses in moving to judgments, e.g., about laws, is the highest kind of knowledge there is. Philosophy is a kind of knowledge that “contemplates the good as a whole” (68.10) and, on this basis, issues orders that allow us to engage in politics correctly and conduct our own lives in a beneficial manner.
What, then, should we expect the content or orientation of the commands issued on the basis of such knowledge of primary things to be? The Protrepticus might go in one of two directions here, and it is not, I think, entirely clear which direction the work takes. First, its position might resemble that of the Republic. The Protrepticus, unsurprisingly, emphasizes the enormous value of philosophic contemplation for its own sake and, at times, has a dismissive attitude toward other possible human goods:
[S]o nothing divine or happy belongs to humans apart from just that one thing worth taking seriously, as much intelligence [nou] and wisdom [phronêseôs] as is in us, for, of what is ours, this alone seems to be immortal, and this alone divine…. We ought, therefore, either to do philosophy or say goodbye to life and depart from this world, since all of the other things anyway seem to be great nonsense and folly. (78.12–15, 78.21–79.2, B108–110)
Further, while the derivation of norms from primary things might be a considerable achievement, the analogy with tools suggests that the application of such norms in judgments about particular laws or institutions is, at least for one with philosophic knowledge, straightforward and almost trivial. On this line of thought, as in the Republic, the basic sort of knowledge that is needed for ruling well would be knowledge of the nature and value of contemplation itself (and, presumably, knowledge of the sort of education required to foster contemplation).
Although this interpretation is possible, the long passage quoted at the beginning of this section appears, I think, to suggest a much greater role for philosophic knowledge. In particular, the most straightforward reading of the tool metaphor suggests that philosophic knowledge of primary things is required for getting right basic ethical and political principles and for correct ethical and political decision-making. Such knowledge might, for example, be required for reliably getting right decisions not only about the basic shape or end of the constitution, but about laws seriatim. Moreover, such a view would have significant resemblances both to views held by Plato (although not, I have argued, in the Republic) and to Aristotle's own later views.
At the end of Section II, I gave some reasons for thinking that in some of Plato's post-Republic dialogues, there is a more pervasive need for sophisticated theoretical reflection in ethical and political judgments. But also in some of the “Socratic” dialogues (e.g., the Apology, the Charmides, the Crito, and the Laches) which are generally thought to be earlier than the Republic, Plato emphasizes the need for rigorous intellectual inquiry into ethical matters. Such inquiry, carried out by means of the elenchus, into general ethical principles (e.g., definitions of the virtues) is not merely necessary for hard cases, but is supposed to be a feature of any good human life and is meant to be employed by all in order to guide their lives and actions in general.17
See, e.g., Plato, Ap. 29e–30b, 30e–31a, 36cd, 38a; Chrm. 175d–176c; Cr. 46b; and La. 184e–185a, 187e–188b, 200e–201b.
Although Aristotle's views about practical wisdom in the Eudemian Ethics and the Nicomachean Ethics are controversial, it is clear that he thought practical wisdom to be an intellectual virtue (although distinct from philosophic wisdom) that is very difficult to acquire and needed for action in general, not just hard cases. (This is consistent with the claim, accepted by some scholars, that the exercise of practical wisdom does not involve the application of rules or general principles to particular cases.) The idea that philosophical reflection (or at least sophisticated intellectual inquiry) is needed for establishing the correct content of moral and political principles may also, I think, seem plausible to many readers of this volume, and it may seem more convincing after the upsurge of work in substantive moral and political philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition since the 1970s, and the more recent explosion of work in practical or applied ethics.
We should note, however, that this view is in clear tension with much of early modern moral and political philosophy, especially that outside the casuistic tradition. Interestingly, the denial that the acquisition and use of ethical or moral knowledge is difficult cuts across several other important divisions among modern moral philosophers. We find it, for example, not only in prominent sentimentalists, but also among rationalists and those in the natural law tradition. To begin, Benjamin Whichcote, the seventeenth-century philosopher and theologian, and the founding father of the Cambridge Platonists, holds that God has made men such that all normal adults are capable of attaining the moral knowledge needed to regulate their actions and relations with each other. The first principles of religion and morality are “self-evident, must be seen in their own Light, and are perceived by an inward Power of Nature.”18
Benjamin Whichcote, in C. A. Patrides, The Cambridge Platonists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 47. I have kept Whichcote's capitalization, but not his use of italics, and I have modernized some spelling. My discussion of these modern thinkers is deeply indebted to Jerome Schneewind's seminal book The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Whichcote, in Patrides, The Cambridge Platonists, 46–47.
But it is not only the existence of a providential God that is made so cognitively accessible to each man. Moral laws are not, as voluntarists thought, merely the arbitrary expression of God's will; their existence and obligation are objective facts about the world. Such laws are, however, embodied in God's commands for us. The fact that we can all, by exercise of reason, know the moral laws that bind us as individuals and in our relation with others is essential to Whichcote's theology. Because we all know, or can know if we are not culpably ignorant or indifferent to what morality requires, we are condemned by our own reason whenever we violate morality. Indeed, the basic sanction of violating morality does not consist in external punishment imposed by God or other men, but lies, rather, in condemnation by our own reason which constitutes our true unhappiness. Whichcote writes:
Man by his nature and Constitution, as God made him at first, being an intelligent Agent, hath Sense of Good and Evil, upon a Moral account. All inferior Beings have a Sense of Convenience or Inconvenience, in a natural Way … for, you cannot get a mere Animal, either to eat or drink that which is not good and agreeable to its nature. And, whereas we call this Instinct; it is most certain that in intelligent Agents, this other [i.e., the Sense of Good and Evil] is INSTINCT, at least. And, for this Reason, Man is faulty, when either he is found in a naughty Temper or any bad Practice. For, he hath Judgment and Power of Discerning: He is made to know the Difference of Things: and he acts as a mad Man, that knowing what is better, chuseth the worse. This is the Ground and Foundation of Man's being truly miserable: For, to be happy or miserable: is mainly in his intellectual Nature. Inferior natures may suffer Wrong: But they are not capable of Happiness or Misery, as intellectual Agents are; because they are not acquitted or condemned from within; nor have anything to challenge or reprove them.20
Ibid., 73–74; cf. 49–52.
Unlike Whichcote, the seventeenth-century political thinker Hugo Grotius belonged to the natural law tradition. But despite the great length of his book The Law of War and Peace (1625) and its promise to treat “such controversies, of any and every kind, as are likely to arise” and lead to war, Grotius adopts a position similar to Whichcote:
I have made it my concern to refer the proofs of things touching the law of nature to certain fundamental conceptions which are beyond question, so that no one can deny them without doing violence to himself. For the principles of that law, if only you pay strict heed to them, are in themselves manifest and clear, almost as evident as those things which we perceive by the external senses; and the senses do not err if the organs of perception are properly formed.21
Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (1625), trans. Francis Kelsey (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1925), 23.
Grotius agrees with Aristotle that certainty is lacking in ethics and that this is the case, at least in part, because very small changes in circumstances can make a great ethical difference.22
As I noted in Section II, the difficulty of codifying general principles in laws is one of the reasons that Plato gives in the Statesman for thinking that philosophic knowledge is needed to deal well with novel circumstances.
What Aristotle wrote is perfectly true, that certainty is not to be found in moral questions in the same degree as in mathematical science…. In moral questions … even trifling circumstances alter the substance…. [T]hus it comes about that between what should be done and what it is wrong to do there is a mean, that which is permissible; and this is now closer to the former, now to the latter.23
Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, 557; cf. 25, 57.
The mean, in Grotius's view, is not, as Aristotle thought, a single point on a continuum such that there is only one way to go right and an indefinite number of ways to go wrong. That there is a range of permissible actions constituting the mean makes unnecessary the precise discrimination of the unique right choice.
Finally, consider Adam Smith. As a sentimentalist, Smith holds that for something to be right or virtuous is for it to elicit the appropriate kinds of feelings of approval. Smith also thinks that
[t]he general rules of almost all the virtues, the general rules which determine what are the offices of prudence, of charity, of generosity, of gratitude, of friendship, are in many respects loose and inaccurate, admit of many exceptions, and require so many modifications, that it is scarce possible to regulate our conduct entirely by a regard to them. The common proverbial maxims of prudence, being founded in universal experience, are perhaps the best general rules which can be given about it.24
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 174. The exceptions are the rules of justice, which are precise, but are restricted in scope; e.g., “if I owe a man ten pounds, justice requires that I should pay him precisely ten pounds, either at the time agreed upon, or when he demands it” (175). Thus, as Schneewind points out, “jurisprudence … [is] the only part of moral philosophy capable of systematic rational development, [but it] is not philosophical” (Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy, 395).
Since the rules of morality, with the exception of justice, are so “loose, vague, and indeterminate,” there are, Smith thinks, only two ways of trying to make practical ethics systematic.25
Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 327.
Ibid., 328–29.
Ibid., 339.
I have only offered a brief sketch of the thought of each of these three figures—Whichcote, Grotius, and Smith—and it would require much more elaboration to provide an adequate depiction of their views. But even the little we have seen is sufficient, I think, to serve the intended purpose—that is, to make vivid a position of which it is easy for contemporary academic writers on ethics to lose sight. There is an important set of views in modern moral philosophy characterized by (1) the belief that moral statements do not merely express our feelings or attachments to norms, but rather, at least sometimes, make literally true claims, and (2) the belief that grasping these principles, and making them as exact as they can be, does not call for sophisticated theoretical or philosophical reflection.
I argued in Section I that Plato, in the Republic at any rate, may have some sympathy for this conclusion (even if his reasons are different from those of the three modern philosophers I have discussed in the present section). If the straightforward interpretation of the tool analogy in the Protrepticus is correct, Aristotle there rejects the Republic's view and thinks that philosophic understanding of the most fundamental entities is necessary for getting right ethical and political judgments in general. I shall suggest in my concluding section that this provides an important, new context for Aristotle's views in later works such as the Eudemian Ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Politics.
IV. Conclusion
I cannot here even begin to consider Aristotle's views on these issues in the Eudemian Ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Politics. Nonetheless, I shall note, very briefly, a few points that merit further attention. In these later works, Aristotle seems to hold that high-level ethical generalizations are fairly easily available to those who have been well brought up, even without any philosophic or quasi-philosophic training. Such ethical training and habituation will be sufficient to enable the auditors of the Nicomachean Ethics to grasp, for example, that justice and courage are virtues, that virtue is fine, and that virtue is good in itself and choiceworthy in itself. Practical wisdom is necessary for the perfection of the virtues of character, but neither practical wisdom nor the ethical virtues require philosophic understanding (sophia). Practical wisdom is the intellectual or rational excellence of a virtuous person, and what is especially distinctive of it is the ability to hit the mean in the complex circumstances of actual life and choice.
What might the political analogue of this be? One would expect that even well-brought-up nonphilosophers would already grasp correct high-level political principles, such as the idea that the constitution should aim at the common good of all the citizens, that the end or telos of a good city is not merely living, but living well, and thus that the citizens should cooperate in fostering and sustaining virtue in each other. In this sense, sophisticated theoretical reflection is not needed to grasp the basic goals and structure of a good city. Political practical wisdom should be required, rather, for finding the best ways of instantiating these goals in the highly complex and changing circumstances that all cities face.
The basic task of political reflection in all cities, except the ideal one—that is, in all cities that are likely to exist—will be to make gradual and moderate changes in laws and institutions to approximate more closely the ideal city. Moreover, the sort of serious intellectual reflection especially required for this will involve study of the history of various constitutions and of the regularities in human behavior that are relevant to politics. This is not, of course, to make the crude error of thinking that political science or reflection is now for Aristotle a value-free, “empirical” study; the regularities will be understood in a thoroughly value-laden way. But political reflection will not, for example, consist in working out more precise definitions of the virtues or in elaborating (say) the “function of man” argument and determining its political implications.28
See, e.g., Richard Kraut, Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 427–70; and Fred D. Miller, Jr., Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 276–308.
Although the foregoing claims would require considerable qualification and expansion, they do, I think, reflect some important tendencies in Aristotle's later thought. I shall now conclude by noting two issues that arise in connection with these claims. First, if my suggested interpretation of the Protrepticus is correct, then either we need to explain why in the later works Aristotle no longer thinks that philosophic knowledge is needed to determine or apply ethical and political principles, or we need to reduce the gap between Aristotle's earlier and later views by building up the sort of knowledge required in the later works.29
We could do this, for example, by arguing that people will typically go wrong unless they possess practical intelligence (nous) of ethical first principles or an understanding of happiness based on a theory of human nature.
Second, as I have noted, Aristotle expects that the auditors of his ethical lectures have been well brought up. They may not yet possess practical wisdom and thus will not be fully virtuous, but they should accept basic ethical principles and already have a strong love of what is fine and a strong hatred of what is base (EN I.4.1095a30–b13, X.9.1179a33–b31). The education that achieves this is not philosophic training, nor even that education prescribed for the ideal city of the Politics. Since Aristotle's auditors have already been well brought up, this sort of education must be that which is available at least to many better-off Greeks both inside and outside Athens. (The Lyceum was not restricted to Athenians.)
So will there be cities whose constitutions foster a genuine love of virtue for its own sake in their citizens, even if the rulers lack practical wisdom and thus often go wrong in dealing with complex and novel circumstances? The closest any city comes to this is Sparta (and perhaps Crete); indeed, Aristotle commends these two cities for being the only ones whose lawgivers aim at educating their citizens for virtue (EN I.13.1102a10–11, X.9.1180a24–26).30
Aristotle's view of Crete is similar to his view of Sparta, although it is somewhat less favorable; see René Gauthier and Jean Jolif, eds., L'Éthique à Nicomaque, vol. 2 (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 2004), 903–4.
On the Spartans, see EE VII.15 and Pol. II.9 and VII.15. For a more sanguine view of Sparta, see Sarah Broadie, “Virtue and Beyond in Plato and Aristotle,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 43 (2005): 97–114, esp. 98–100; Broadie holds that in the Eudemian Ethics, at any rate, Aristotle thinks that the Spartans are genuinely “good” and “virtuous” although they value virtue just for the sake of goods such as wealth, health, and power.
The answer to the question posed in the previous paragraph thus seems to be “no,” but why are there no such cities? In many cities, those who have been carefully habituated and educated lack the power to arrange the laws and constitution, but this is not true in Sparta. There the fault is part of the very nature of the ethical character and education of the Spartan elite. Despite the Spartan constitution's concern with training the citizens' characters, Aristotle criticizes Sparta's system of education for cultivating only one virtue, that is, courage (see, e.g., Pol. II.9.1271a41–b3, VII.15.1334a22–b3). But then the question becomes why the Spartans developed (and why they maintain) such a defective system of education. This question is especially pressing because the failure is so drastic: the Spartans do not choose fine things for their own sake, and they do fine actions only “coincidentally” (kata to sumbebêkos, EE VII.15.1249a1–16).
Perhaps the failure of all non-ideal cities can be explained either by the fact that those who have been well brought up and have the right attitude toward virtue are too few to exercise authority, or by the fact that, where a carefully and rigorously educated group does exercise authority, special circumstances corrupt the system of education. In the case of Sparta, for example, dwindling numbers and the constant threat to citizens of being overthrown by their serfs (helots) had something to do with the corruption of the citizens' education.32
Crete, however, did not have such worries about serf rebellions; see, e.g., Pol. II.9.1269a34–b5, II.10.1272b15–23.
Nonetheless, it is hard to see why such special circumstances should be inevitable. It would take further investigation to determine whether there are deeper reasons for such failure. One plausible constraint on an explanation is that it must allow for the existence of people (like Aristotle's auditors, but unlike the Spartans) who lack practical wisdom, but love virtue for its own sake and would try, if able, to foster it in the whole body of citizens. There are many possible explanations, and I shall mention only two that seem worthy of more consideration. First, it might be that although well-brought-up individuals can develop the right attitude toward virtue without practical wisdom, this attitude will not persist throughout life unless the individuals come to acquire practical wisdom. Thus, rulers who are fully mature adults will tend to have had their attachment to virtue undermined and will tend to think that training and educating the citizens to virtue is not as important as they once held it to be.
A second possibility adds to this that practical wisdom and the virtues of character cannot be fully realized unless their possessor is aware that there is something of even greater value, that is, philosophic contemplation.33
For an influential discussion, see John Cooper, “Plato and Aristotle on ‘Finality’ and ‘(Self-)Sufficiency’,” in John Cooper, Knowledge, Nature, and the Good (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 270–308, esp. 302–8.
Determining whether Aristotle holds either of these views and, if so, what his reasons are would require further inquiry. Such inquiry is thus, I think, necessary in order to understand fully what sort of knowledge Aristotle requires in rulers and citizens in a just or good city and what relation such knowledge has to philosophic wisdom. If this is right, then the question of what Aristotle's attitude is toward the claims of Plato in the Republic with which we began has not been fully answered.
