Ancient Political Thought

Philosophy evolves over time. Subjects that are unsettled, either because they are new or because they are tricky, are the right purview of philosophers. When a subject becomes better understood, it spins off and become its own intellectual specialty. Over time, specialized scientific fields emerge, while the ultimate questions of life, the universe and everything remain in philosophy.

Five hundred years before Christ, the Greek philosopher Thales prescribed, “Mens Sana in Corpore Sanum” or “A sound mind in a healthy body.” (Actually he didn’t. He said something like it in ancient Greek, which was translated into the Latin.) Thales was was doing philosophy. But 200 or so years later, Hippocrates focused and specialized on the philosophy of human health. Hippocrates got so good at it that something new — the field of medicine — spun off and became its own science.

Astronomy emerged as a scientific discipline of its own because the philosophical significance of the movement of the planets demanded explanation. Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler and Galileo rose to that challenge in the during the 15th and 16th centuries and astronomy was created. Aristotle wrote about the shapes and behaviors of living creatures as a philosopher, but people who do the same work today are called biologists. Various fields, such as economics, religion and music all spun off in their own time. And so did political theory.

In ancient times, political science was not yet very specialized or very well developed. It is sometimes fascinating as philosophy, but it doesn’t give much that is useful for an American citizen in 2021. This article provides some highlights from a much wider and varied field.

The ancient and medieval thinkers worked with limited understanding. They were wise, but the world they knew encompassed little more than the lands touching the Mediterranean Sea. They had pretty crazy ideas about the world beyond. The works of Herodotus and even Aristotle are filled with errors because they wrote about things they had never seen and places they never visited. Aristotle’s “On the Parts of Animals” is a long catalog of all the animals in the world, and is mostly an excellent work in the field that became zoology. But it also describes a fantastical, non-existent creature called the manticore:

“Ctesias mentions an Indian animal called martichora, which had three rows of teeth in each jaw; it is as large and as rough as a lion, and has similar feet, but its ears and face are like those of a man; its eye is grey, and its body red; it has a tail like a land scorpion, in which there is a sting; it darts forth the spines with which it is covered instead of hair, and it utters a noise resembling the united sound of a pipe and a trumpet; it is not less swift of foot than a stag, and is wild, and devours men.”

That is all wrong. Manticores don’t exist. To be fair to Aristotle, is a only sharing the evidence he gathered from another writer. He isn’t saying the manticore exists — but that someone named Ctesias claims they do. But that is the point. The writer Ctesias had his facts wrong and Aristotle had no better source for the creatures of distant lands. So he passed on inaccurate details of an absurd, fantastical creature. The standard of proof that was acceptable among the ancients falls short of later ages.

Solon the Lawgiver

Solon lived 500 or more years before Christ and before the big three Greek philosophers: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Most of what we know about Solon comes from histories by Herodotus and Plutarch that were written two centuries or more after he died. Those two early historians were revered by the founding fathers, and are still revered today by scholars such as the American conservative Russell Kirk. In The Roots of American Order, Kirk paints an admirable picture of Solon in his time:

[Solon] proclaimed that only through righteous order, eunomia, may the commonwealth endure. ‘The leaders of the people have been corrupt and unrighteous,’ Solon wrote in one of his elegies. ‘They have affronted Dike, or Justice, and Justice will take Vengeance unless the Commonwealth mends its ways.’ .

Solon got his chance to put his ideas into practice in 594 BC, when he was put in charge of Athens.

The condition of the commonwealth being desperate at the time, everyone — the middle class, the rich the poor — agreed to confer upon Solon the authority of “arbiter” or “reformer of the constitution” with power to do whatever he might find necessary. . . Solon, rejecting opportunity to seize absolute rule and vast wealth, healed Athenian Society.

Under ancient customs, the Athenians could simply proclaim Solon their leader. Athens had laws and norms and standard practices, but the people of his time could set those aside and just hand power to Solon. It would be like America in the 21st Century scrapping elections and putting Tom Hanks in charge because everybody knows he’s a good guy.

In Solon’s case, it paid off. He wasn’t fettered by rules of budgets or norms, and he made massive changes. He made Athens stronger, fairer, and better.

Plato’s Republic

Plato was all about ideals. He believed that the notion of a perfect apple, or a perfect horse or a perfect circle had significance. The only way to understand or to use an apple or a horse would be to compare it to the ideal apple or the ideal horse. He insisted that good government and good society, too, would be achieved by putting ideal leaders into the role of leadership, and then letting them lead.

Plato suggested that a city or other society needs three kinds of people: rulers, fighters, and workers. The city thrives, he said, if the rulers are wise, the fighters are brave, and the workers self-controlled. He drew an analogy between the city and a person. A person has a stomach, a heart and a brain. The person’s brain needs to think well (like the leader), the heart need to be spirited (like the warriors), and the stomach needs to be not too greedy (like the workers).

Plato’s Republic is famous for something called the allegory of the cave. It is a favorite of first-year college students. Plato used it to illustrated the difference between the people who are truly wise and qualified and the people who don’t deserve any power. It is over-simplistic and kind of silly. But all students of philosophy and political theory need to know about it.

The illustration shows some men sitting in a dark cave, chained and tied down so they can only face toward the back wall of the cave. They cannot see that other men are walking around holding cutouts of a man and horse and a dog before a fire, projecting the shadows of a man, a horse and a dog onto the wall of the cave. Plato says the men sitting in chains would believe that the shadows were the real things, since they only see those. Plato says those prisoners would never make good leaders while they remains chained in the cave — which is true. Plato then directs our attention to some other men, who are not chained, but are free to move around. They encounter the real world, observe actual men, horses and dogs, and achieve true understanding.

The allegory of the caves is accepted as a great example of philosophy. And perhaps it is. But it is not useful for modern political theory, because nobody is chained in a cave all his life. We have no way of knowing who the modern equivalents of the chained slaves are. Is it people who get their information from Fox News or MSNBC?

Aristotle

Aristotle was Plato’s student, and his chief critic. Take a look at the illustration for this essay, which is a detail from the famous painting, The School of Athens, by Raphael. The two men are Plato and Aristotle. Plato (in red) points up toward the highest ideal — the key to his philosophy. Aristotle (in blue) extends his hand outward toward the world. His philosophy insisted that the ideal apple was less important than the one you could actually find growing on a tree.

 The Anabasis of Xenophon

“Anabasis” means “Going Up” or more imaginatively, “rising to the challenge.” The book revolves around a true and historical episode that happened around 400BC. The Persian ruler Cyrus offered to make peace with the Greeks after a long and fruitless war. But Cyrus wasn’t in power yet and needed the Greeks’ help to overcome a challenger. So the Greeks sent an army of 10,000 men marching through modern Turkey and deep into Persian territory. As they approached the Persian capitol of Persepolis, a messenger rode up to inform them that they were too late.

Cyrus had lost. He was killed, and the victor had declared death to all Cyrus’s supporters — especially the invading Greeks. At that, some of the Greeks went over to the other side. Those who remained stood leaderless, deep in enemy territory, running short of supplies, and wondering what to do.

And then the beauty of the Anabasis emerges. At this moment of crisis, Xenophon jumps up and delivers an inspiring speech:

“Men and soldiers! Our present circumstances are difficult, since we have been deprived of such men, generals, captains, and soldiers; and in addition Ariaeus and his troops, our former ally, have betrayed us, Nevertheless, we need in these present circumstances to be brave men and not give up but try—if ever we are able—to save ourselves by conquering nobly, and if we are not, let us at least die nobly and let us never fall into the hands of our enemies while we live.”

The Greeks then set off on a long march toward home, fighting, begging, negotiating — doing whatever suits the challenge of the day. Throughout the story, they strive to “contend most nobly.” Eventually, after weeks of constant desperate struggle, some of them get back to Greek territory. This ideal of noble struggle fits closely with Plato’s principles. The leaders led wisely, the warriors fought bravely, and the bearers carried their loads with stoicism. And the results was salvation and survival.

The story of an army going deep into enemy territory, getting betrayed, and fighting their way home against great odds is an inspiring one. It translates perfectly into a movie set in 1970s New York, about the all-night struggle of a street gang called The Warriors as they fight their way back to their home turf after a summit of all New York’s street gangs turns violent.

Source: warriorsmovie.co.uk

That story from thousands of years ago can be retold in a modern setting and still seem realistic and inspiring because the ancients were the same as us .

Ancient philosophy, though, presents a mix of ideas. Some are still universal and familiar and right-seeming. Other are quaint, or downright odd. Some ancient philosophy is utterly wrong. Pythagoras, for instance, advised his followers not to eat beans on the mistaken idea that breath is life and flatulence is life-breath exiting the body. Students of political theory will find better material to study in later ages.