Ancient politics vs modern

A couple of months ago I posted an essay about Plato's Republic, and specifically about whether its prescriptions are as laughably impossible as we often say.  But it is worth noting that this is just one thread in a larger argument about the applicability of ancient thought at all.  Of course in principle I have already staked out a position on that question at the very beginning of this blog, although I am painfully aware that I have written so little here that anyone would be excused for thinking I haven't proven a damned thing.  What is especially interesting is that sometimes it is possible to use arguments or modes of thought that would have appeared perfectly clear to classical thinkers, while coming to conclusions quite different from theirs.  And politics is one of the places where this happens.

In my post about sex in the Republic, I argued that we shouldn't expect to be able to implement the kind of sexual regime Plato describes [an arrangement that was already long obsolete by classical times!] so long as we still own property.  But what about the rest of classical political thought -- the parts that the ancients themselves agreed with?  While no doubt the ideas may be useful as a framework or a reference point, could we plausibly try to build a society -- a regime -- on classical ideals?  And if not, why not?

A famous argument that it is no longer possible to frame a regime along classical lines is given in Stephen Holmes's 1979 article "Aristippus In and Out of Athens."  Holmes argues that the classical model of political life is no longer possible because times have changed. Specifically, Holmes does not deny the point from which classical thinkers started -- viz., that human nature requires sociability, ... social contact with others, ... friends.  But he makes the point that in classical times, the only way to get this social contact was as a member of the civic network in a polis, as an engaged citizen.  The only path to gratifying one's social needs was politics.  In modern society, by contrast, most of us find ourselves to be part of many different social networks, networks that overlap and interlock but do not simply coincide.  We are members of our families, but we are also employees at our jobs, worshippers at our churches, coaches at Little League, volunteers for local charities and in community theater, and so on.  Some of the people we know from one network might also show up in another one, but many won't.  And this complexity of interlocking but independent networks gives us a kind of freedom that was unimaginable to ancient thinkers who had never experienced anything like it.  Any attempt to implement classical political ideals would mean merging all these networks into the political network, or in other words politicizing all of life the way totalitarian states do.  But this is horrible -- nobody wants to live like that!  Therefore the modern application of classical political ideals is impossible.

It's an ingenious argument, and it was a career-maker.  (Full disclosure: I took one class from Holmes many years later, and it was halfway through the term before I visited his office hours to ask, "Are you the same Stephen Holmes who wrote ...?" He rolled his eyes and then chuckled, admitting that yes he was and adding that whenever he met a total stranger that was usually the first question asked.)  But notice that strictly speaking Holmes doesn't prove that it is impossible to apply classical forms to modern polities ... just that it would be very unpleasant or unattractive.  Anyone committed to dragging out the argument could easily reply, "That's just because we've been conditioned by growing up in the modern world to prefer the kinds of pleasures we find here. If we had been trained from birth to value other things instead, we might prefer the classical regime after all."  So the question naturally becomes, Is there any argument that can settle the contest between ancient and modern political forms other than an argument that proceeds from an acceptance of modern values?  Or does it all just depend on whatever you like?  
 
To get a grip on this question we need a little better idea of what exactly is entailed by classical political ideals.  Happily we can find a crisp list of four essential points articulated by Bertrand de Jouvenel in chapter 8 of his Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good.  (You can also find the book here.  For a good overview of Jouvenel's life and thought generally, see also this article here.)  Jouvenel makes it clear that the following criteria were absolutely essential to any good state, in the classical perspective:

1. It must be small.  In the Laws, Plato proposed a maximum size for his ideal city of 5040 families.
2. It must be completely homogeneous: racially, culturally, linguistically ... the works.
3. It must prohibit the importation of any beliefs or customs or ideas from outside. That more or less prohibits immigration of any kind, or even much in the way of newspapers.  (Television or the Internet would be straight out.)
4. It must not change. Innovation is death. 

Brian Anderson's article that I linked above summarized these criteria by saying, "You begin to get the picture. It looks like Albania under Enver Hoxa."  Not a place I'd want to live, nor probably you.  But does that matter?  Remember, the question now is not whether you or I would like to live here, but whether it is actually impossible.  Even if we found 5000 families of people who valued this sort of thing, could they make a go of it or not?

In the short run, and in total isolation, probably Yes.  But in the long run No.  And the real reason has nothing to do with "values".  The simple fact is that modern societies -- large, diverse, innovative societies -- are stronger than ancient ones.  In any contest, a big army has the advantage over a small army (other things being equal).  To be sure, other things aren't always equal.  David had the advantage over Goliath because he had superior technology.  But then, the innovative army will have better technology than the non-innovative one.  The diverse army can pick up new recruits anywhere -- this is one of the features of empires throughout history -- while the homogeneous army (like that of the Spartans) is limited to one population and one alone.  And a culture that is open to immigrants is also open to planting itself everywhere: you can buy a Big Mac on Red Square, and only two countries in the world officially do not import Coca Cola.  (Those two countries are Cuba and North Korea, and there are rumors suggesting we not be too sure about North Korea.)  There is no power in classical civilization that can stand up to this.

This says nothing about the respective levels of cultivation, to be sure.  I don't mean to compare the art of Praxiteles to the Cartoon Network.  But in terms of sheer strength -- in the first instance, military strength; and in the second, cultural dominance -- modern societies are vastly more powerful than ancient ones.  Set up a modern state and an ancient one side by side, and the first will conquer the second as soon as it wants to.  In that sense -- if in no other -- ancient political ideals are no longer realizable.  
 

Pleasures, pure and mixed

There's a section of the Philebus where Plato has Socrates argue that the intensest pleasures are all mixed with pain – that, in fact, it is this very mixture with pain which makes them so intense.  He talks about scratching, which would never be a pleasure except that the itch which precedes it is so uncomfortable; but the combination (pain of itch + pleasure of scratch) excites us far beyond what any unmixed pleasure could ever do.  (Incidentally, the translation I own clearly uses the words itch and scratch as if he were talking about mosquito bites; but the elaborately overwritten way he describes the pleasure of scratching is utterly incredible unless he is really talking about sex and means us all to get the point without him having to say so.)  Besides scratching he also instances the pleasures of the theater, arguing that the enjoyment of drama – not only tragedy but even comedy – is a pleasure mixed with large quantities of pain, and that it is therefore more moving, more deranging, more maddening than any pure pleasure could ever possibly be.

His examples of pure pleasures include the pleasure of seeing clear geometric shapes, the pleasure of hearing pure tones, the pleasure of smelling delightful flowers, and so on.  Note that pure tones make the cut as pure pleasures, but not all music does.  I assume that Beethoven symphonies would be judged to contain a fair bit of pain (all that Sturm und Drang), thus explaining why listeners are so awed by them; and doubtless he would say the same thing about rock, but even more vehemently.

For the most part, the Buddha dharma agrees with this assessment exactly.  The whole explanation for why anyone would want to follow the Buddha dharma is that it brings you pleasure and the avoidance of all suffering.  When you look closely and realize that Buddhism offers you pleasure by asking you to give up (for example) sex and booze, the answer is that those things aren't really pleasures because they bring with them such a large quantity of suffering.  Since the whole point of the Buddha dharma is to avoid suffering, that means avoiding those alleged "pleasures" which are really just suffering in disguise.  Hence, for monks at least, no sex or booze, no ownership of stuff, and only one meager meal a day.

I've remarked before that Platonism and Buddhism seem to have a lot in common, and this teaching is certainly a prime example.  What is interesting is that in both cases the emphasis, so far as I can tell, seems to be on proving that this and that pleasure contains a large component of pain (or suffering).  It seems to be taken for granted that, once this point is understood, the result is obvious: if this or that intense pleasure derives its very intensity from containing a large quantity of pain, then it can't possibly be as good as it feels and any sane person will want to give it up.

Is it just me, or is there a step missing here?  Couldn't someone argue just as logically that if the reason this or that pleasure (sex, say, or booze or the theater) feels so intense is that it contains a large admixture of pain, well then pain must not be as bad as we thought it was?  Couldn't someone argue that if pain causes intense pleasure then pain is good and necessary?  (Or at any rate that if certain kinds of pain, at certain times and under certain circumstances, cause intense pleasure – then those kinds of pain, at those times and under those circumstances, are good and necessary?)  It sounds like a perverse conclusion when you put it that way, but I think it is just as logical as the other.  If it's perverse, ... well, and is it somehow not perverse to argue that we should give up sex and wine and Beethoven because they are insufficiently pure?  What?  Or do we have a competition here between two conclusions that both sound pretty weird, but that both follow equally well from a surprising (but valid) analysis?

Let me go a step farther.  It sounds perverse to say that pain is or can be good.  But what about saying that you have to be willing to put up with short-term inconveniences (small pains) in order to get long-term goods (greater pleasures)?  What about saying that it's better to do your homework even when you'd like to goof off (small pain) because you'll learn more that way and so become a success in life (greater pleasure)?  Isn't that a platitude?  Doesn't everybody believe that?  Do Plato and the Buddha really disagree?  Seen in that light, the "praise of pain" doesn't sound so weird after all.

So perhaps it's not quite so obvious which life to choose.  Plato and the Buddha recommend a life of pure pleasures unmixed with pain and suffering.  This ends up meaning a life of clarity and serenity, an abjuring of passion.  But I think it is equally logical to accept the joys of passion, in full knowledge that there are miseries there as well – that, in fact, the very word passion means "suffering".

At any rate, if that conclusion is wrong then I think it takes a deeper argument to show it.

Sex at Dawn, and the Republic

Name anything written by Plato. I bet the first thing you thought of -- maybe the only one -- was the Republic.

Tell me something about the Republic. Once we skip past "It's long," "It's boring," and "I think we had to read it in college but I just blew it off" the next thing to trip off the tongue -- the first remark that has anything to do with the content -- is probably "It's idealistic and impractical."

Plato gets that a lot. In the central books of the Republic, Socrates describes a made-up city, and commentators ever since (starting with Aristotle) have fallen all over themselves criticizing how silly his ideas are. It got so bad for so many centuries that in the late 1940's Leo Strauss proposed (and his students have later extended) the theory that Plato was just kidding. Strauss's student Allan Bloom, responsible for one of the most widely-used translations of the Republic, amplified this suggestion by saying that the Republic is really meant to expose the true nature of political life, and the true demands of political justice, so that we can all see just how problematic politics and justice are once we realize that the true demands of political community are impossible.



Impossible? How so? Well, there are plenty of fish to shoot in this barrel, but Bloom focusses on three specific proposals, which Socrates himself acknowledges are huge, saying they will provoke "three waves" of ridicule from his listeners: that the Guardians of the City should hold all their possessions in common, that they should hold their women and children in common, and that the whole show should be ruled by philosophers. Bloom says that every listener will naturally reject these proposals, because they leave us no fragment of private life, ... because everybody will naturally want to hold on tight to his own personal property, nobody will want to share his bed-partner with another (because of jealousy), everybody will be attached to his own children at the expense of all the others, and besides philosophers are ridiculous. Who would ever accept being ruled by them? The point, Bloom goes on to explain, is that real community -- if the word means anything -- is like that. Political groups, social groups, kinship groups ... they require everything from us, they ask for our total devotion. Holding anything back is invariably perceived as disloyal, as unjust, even (potentially) treacherous or treasonous. But since (Bloom concludes) we can't help but hold things back -- since it's a simple fact of nature that we won't give up our stuff, that we won't let our neighbors fuck our spouses, and that we'll always cheer for our own kids at Little League -- perfect justice and perfect community are impossible. There is and will always be a permanent tension between the demands of justice, of community, of the group, and the immutable requirements of human nature.



And ... well, that's fine, I guess. It's actually an impressive argument when he spells out all the details. Only, ... pause with me for just a minute to remember the argument of Christopher Ryan's and Cacilda Jethá's delightful book Sex at Dawn. Ryan and Jethá argue a number of things, but foremost on the list is their claim that the way we organize sex and child-rearing -- all our presuppositions about chastity and fidelity, about infidelity and immorality, about legitimacy and bastardy and parental affection -- that all this is a product of the agricultural revolution, or at any rate of the introduction of food surplusses that can be saved. They argue further that among "immediate-return foraging societies" these concepts are unknown. And they wind up by pointing out that for most of human history, we grouped together into bands that lived by immediate-return hunting and foraging. Durable property was unknown, food storage was unknown, ... and so were most of the concepts we use today to think about sex.

In fact, the more you think about it, the more you see that the first two of those three huge proposals actually describe the very same societies Ryan and Jethá write about. Holding all property in common? If "property" means rocks used for pounding, why not hold them in common? There are plenty lying around on the ground. Sticks sharpened to spears? There are always more sticks. Cars, computers, refrigerators, houses, money, jewelry, swords, metal of any kind? Nope, hadn't been invented yet. Look at the description of the Bushman community in the first few minutes of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" -- before the Coke bottle -- and you'll see what I mean.


What about "women and children"? Socrates says (at Stephanus 457 D), "All these women are to belong to all these men in common, and no woman is to live privately with any man. And the children, in their turn, will be in common, and neither will a parent know his own offspring, nor a child his parent." And right away his interlocutor (I think it is Glaucon at that point, though it is a little hard to keep track.) objects that this arrangement sounds both impractical and undesirable. But isn't this exactly the scenario that Sex at Dawn describes? That in paleolithic communities, men and women fucked whom they wanted when they wanted, and then the whole tribe raised children together, loving them all without caring who was whose? The whole discussion of "partible paternity" and of "intersecting webs" of mothers and fathers in Chapters Six and Seven are about exactly that. Again, so far from being impossible or impractical, this measure looks like something that may well have been the norm for most of human history.

The third proposal, rule by philosophers, we can probably write off as a piece of special pleading. But Bloom points out that in principle we would all like the wise to rule, more or less. We may disagree that philosophers are especially wise, but that is another point. Even here, though, I think there is not a total disconnect. Ryan and Jethá write that in the societies they study there is very little social hierarchy and a broad sense of social equality. Similarly, there is a reluctance to do what somebody else tells you, unless there is a better reason than that they said so. In a society like that, the most influential people are likely to be the ones who are most persuasive. And since these tribes are small and everybody has known everybody else forever, that doesn't mean someone who can run a slick propaganda campaign. Most often it will mean someone whose ideas have proven right before. Philosophers? Maybe not. But the wise? Maybe closer.

This way of looking at the subject casts a whole new light on Bloom's claim that Socrates here shows the nature of community and justice. If this is how we lived for most of human history, if this is (as far as anything can be) the way we evolved to live, then an immediate-return foraging community may indeed be the very kind of community we are built to live in. So far as we can infer purpose from long-term evolutionary development -- and I am bracketing a huge philosophical discussion here, about which let me say right now only that whatever you think of the idea of innate human purposes, it is pretty clear that cats have long claws and strong pouncing muscles in order to catch mice* -- I say, so far as we can infer purpose from this kind of evidence it seems plausible that we were meant to live in immediate-return foraging communities. But these are indeed exactly communities where all individual interest is subordinated to the communal interest, where there is no private property to speak of, where sexuality is not channeled to monogamous forms of expression, and where children are raised by the whole tribe as a huge pool of fathers and mothers and uncles and aunts. In other words, the true nature of human community, the true nature of political organization, the true nature of justice ... at heart it really is this kind of communal life. Bloom is right about that. The only place he goes wrong is to say that it is impossible, when that's how we lived for most of our life as a species.

So is the tragic Straussian prognosis wrong as well? ... the gloomy story that says there is a permanent conflict (or "tension") between what is best for the individual and what is best for society? If a just society is possible because we lived that way in the Stone Age and they live that way now in the Kalahari, does that mean we truly can achieve justice and community in our lifetimes?

Sure. Move to the Kalahari.**

But short of that, ... no, I don't think so. Ryan and Jethá are really clear about saying that times have changed. With the introduction of agriculture and property, it becomes impossible to lead a life of the kind of sexual freedom they describe. And as sex goes, so goes justice. As long as we live around agriculture and property -- hell, as long as we can hoard resources for tomorrow, which may not take much more than salt and fire -- for so long we will live in an "ownership society."*** And for so long will the joy of true community in the deepest sense -- including (but not limited to) a social acceptance of promiscuity -- be unavailable to us. We can't get there from here. Sadly, Strauss and Bloom are right about that too.



* Six years after writing this post, I finally spelled out the beginnings of the argument I allude to here -- viz., the argument that there are innate purposes, and that what you evolved for is that purpose. You can find it here.
** Or Mars. This kind of society also looks exactly like the Nest that Valentine Michael Smith sets up at the heart of the Church of All Worlds in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. In fact, for some years I have toyed with the idea that Stranger is really an extended gloss on the Republic. If you're on your way to Mars, call me when you get there.

*** Stephen Snyder's review of Sex at Dawn is really good on this point, so I am glad that Ryan and Jethá posted it on their website.

Two kinds of joy

Last summer I went to a meditation retreat with a dear friend -- the one who introduced me to meditation in the first place.  I enjoyed it … part of me wants to say it was restful, but in fact I was exhausted when we got back.  But the quiet and clarity were delightful, and I can see why people love it so much.  Some of the people there were actually monastics – Buddhist monks – and of course that takes “loving it” to a whole new level.  Maybe not quite something I aspire to.  Still, it was a good way to spend the weekend.

Saturday evening there was a kind of “talent show” or fun get-together of all the guests at the retreat, where people could tell jokes or stories, recite poems, or whatever they felt like.  For a few minutes I debated internally about quoting the Sarah Teasdale poem "Barter", but finally decided against it.  The turbulence, or urgency, or passion of its last stanza seemed somehow out of place in a retreat devoted to calm, quiet, and mindfulness.

And yet, I wasn’t completely happy with that answer.  After all, Teasdale’s poem talks about the years of strife being in the service of that “one white, shining hour of peace”.  The hour of peace can’t be out of place as a Buddhist goal, and more than once the event organizers repeated that without suffering there can be no compassion.  So it was a puzzle, and I spent some time puzzling over it.

I’m not sure I came to any profound resolution, but in the process I did see a totally unexpected commonality between the way of passion and the way of mindfulness.  And over the next couple of days I tried to spell it out.  I came up with this:

The forest’s dry as tinder. Just a spark,

And all the hill will come alive with flame –

A shining beacon, bright against the dark,

That swallows whole your home and life and name.

Just so it is with passion. Once alight,

All obstacles restraining it are lost.

Friends, reputation, family, sense of right –

Joy torches in a smoking holocaust.

For quiet, seek the Joy of mindfulness:

A candle sheltered from the blust’ring storm –

No death nor ruin, anguish nor distress –

No bonfire, but a lamp that’s light and warm.

Yet e’en this lamp will burn up all you have.

For if you chase this Joy to where it lives,

You’ll leave your home, your work, your kin, your love,

Your very name when Dharm’ a new name gives.

What mystery for wise men to admire:

Why Joy must be an all-consuming fire!

Dharma as distraction

So why haven't I been writing lately?  Besides the usual excuses, I mean ....

Last spring a dear friend of mine introduced me to vipassana (or "mindfulness") meditation, and I began to learn something (beyond a textbook level) about the ethics and outlook of Buddhism.  And it kind of took the wind out of my sails, because I found myself no longer sure what the point of this blog is.  I started out trying to write a kind of common-sense classical philosophy -- a usable, livable classical philosophy rather than one confined to libraries.  But now I wonder if maybe there already is such a thing.

Of course there are many ways that Buddhism and Hellenism are different.  Each went down its own road of metaphysical speculation, for example.  But in ethics, which has to be the core of any "livable" philosophy, how much difference is there really?  When you sift through all the drama and stage-dressing of Plato's Republic, the fundamental explanation why we should act ethically is that acting unethically makes us unhappy.  Nobody wants to be unhappy, so act ethically and you won't be.  Shakyamuni Buddha says exactly the same thing.  It is clear from the metaphysics of the Republic that -- whether or not Plato really believed in reincarnation (and we probably don't know for sure) -- Plato certainly taught that our actions have consequences for our own souls, that we become such-and-such a kind of person because of the choices we make.  You could repeat that last sentence substituting the name "Buddha" for "Plato" and it would still be true.  And so on.

OK, so they are not identical.  Plato seems to have allowed that there is a positive role (even if a small one) for wine in a good life, while the Buddha doubted it.  Plato certainly thought there is a positive role for erotic longing in a good life (though we can discuss whether he thought consummation was nearly as good), and the Buddha classified it as a form of suffering.  But enough of it is similar that, what with this and that claims on my time anyway, I found I just didn't have enough motivation to overcome the hurdles and get back to it.

But I want to.  Hellenism and Buddhism aren't identical.  And even if they were, spelling out the identity could be kind of fun.  Besides, there are articles I have promised to write: on the Theory of Forms, for example, or on Neoplatonist theology.  Even if nobody reads this site, I ought to pay up.

I'll come back to this.  Soon.  Or at any rate it won't be another year.  Stay tuned ....

"Have you been writing?"

I went to a public lecture this afternoon and saw three people I know – from totally different contexts.  Two are faculty at my son's high school (one of whom is my son’s advisor); the third is a guy I used to work with long ago at a past employer.  I suppose it’s inevitable that I run into folks I know whenever I go out: plenty of people call this a small town.  At any rate it’s a very small town for its size.

As Ialked to my ex-colleague after the lecture he asked, “Have you been writing?”  Well, no.  Not exactly.  Not at all, in fact.  Of course I’ve got reasons: I’ve been busy and there’s been a lot going on and the dog ate my homework ….  But that’s all just chatter, and at least I had the decency not to make excuses out loud even as I rehearsed them in my head.  All I said was “No.”

So my friend started to talk about procrastination, and about how to tackle a big project by breaking it down into little itty-bitty projects and then knocking them off the list one at a time.  Of course he’s right.  He’s also the one who first encouaged me to start blogging, five years before I started writing under the name “Hosea”.  (The first things I ever posted, under my own name, are no longer on the Internet so far as I know, and the Internet is a richer place for their absence.)  So we chatted some more and then went our separate directions.  But all the while my mind was starting to murmur to me, “Get it in gear, Hosea. None of this stuff is going to write itself, you know.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if it did?

Happy birthday, Plato!

As near as I can figure it, today is Plato’s birthday.  The traditional date was the 7th day of the month of Thargelion.  The Athenian calendar was a lunar one, so this means the seventh day after the second-last new moon before the summer solstice.  And I think that’s today.

Next year, it looks like it will be on Cinco de Mayo.

So do something Platonic today: contemplate the nature of reality, appreciate the beauty of simple colors and geometric shapes and soothing music, argue passionately about the education of the young … or open a large jug of wine with a dozen good friends and sit around until dawn talking about love.  Your pick which!