Machiavelli’s Shirt
‘And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’
W B Yeats, The Second Coming.
‘How could I possibly tell you what the sermon was about? You know that I never listen to such things.’
Machiavelli, in a letter to his friend, Francesco Vettori.
The solution to climate change is achievable, and staring us in the face. The initial part of this ‘achievable solution’ lies in the realms of science. If we are lucky, researchers may yet happen upon one or more processes which miraculously absorb carbon dioxide, transmogrify plastic, absorb particulates, provide clean energy, guide meteorology and so forth. No one has yet found an answer to these problems, and none but a very few experts have even the slightest idea of how to go about solving them. Despite this fact, a cornucopia of suggestions and solutions continues to pour forth, like raw sewage into the crystal waters of a mountain stream, or fissured ice cliffs slithering to their liquid death in polar oceans. Meanwhile climate change deniers have joined the ranks of flat earthers, astrologists, and a recent US president.
Any effective scientific solution to climate change we must leave to the scientists who know what they are doing. Or trying to do. The history of our previous century has demonstrated that they are capable of comparable miracles – of creation (moon landings) and destruction (nuclear superbombs). Though one particular scientific solution to our problems, or at least an amelioration of these problems, continues to elude us. I speak of cold fusion, the simplified production of nuclear energy involving little electricity and no pressure, which none have yet succeeded in producing, despite unverifiable claims.
In 1989 the British chemist Martin Fleischmann and the American electrochemist Stanley Pons jointly announced their discovery of a revolutionary, yet comparatively simple laboratory experiment. This involved the electrolysis of heavy water on a palladium (Pd) electrode, which managed to produce excess energy that could not be accounted for by chemical reaction alone – implying nuclear fusion. Despite repeated attempts, no one has yet managed to conduct this experiment and produce a similar result. The very idea of cold fusion has now fallen from fashion; but this was not always the case. During the last decade of the the previous century, a friend of mine – the first environment editor of the Observer, Jeremy Bugler – happened to interview the Nobel prizewinning nuclear physicist Hans Bethe. At the end of the interview, he asked Bethe how long he thought it would be before we could produce cheap, universally available cold fusion. ‘It should take about ten years,’ he was told. Almost three decades later, Jeremy Bugler happened to ask another eminent nuclear physicist the same question, and was again confidently informed: ‘It should take about ten years’. However, in the words of the Nobel prizewinning chemist and ‘father of nanotechnology’ Richard Smalley: ‘When a scientist says something is possible, they are probably underestimating how long it will take. But if they say it’s impossible, they’re probably wrong.’
The classic example of the latter took place in 1842, when the French philosopher Auguste Comte declared that although we could examine the stars with ever more powerful telescopes, which could determine their sizee, their motion, and even their distance from the earth, ‘we can never know anything of their chemical or mineralogical structure; and, much less, that of the organic beings who inhabit their surface’. Just seventeen years later, the German chemist Robert Bunsen (after whom the burner is named) invented the spectroscope, which enabled us to examine the light spectra emanated by a star, and thus determine its chemical composition, as well as the the density of its elements. Although admittedly, the second part of Comte’s prediction remains an open question.
Climate change will require many ‘solutions’, not all of which required Nobel-level science. Rice provides half the world’s protein, yet paddy fields release into the atmosphere vast amounts of methane, a gas which contributes thirty times more to global warming than the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide. Enter Deborah Moskowitz of the Resource Renewable Institute, who came across evidence that the introduction of fish into paddy fields results in an ecosystem which causes a 90% reduction in the release of methane, as well as providing the rice farmers with a new source of food.
Yet even a world-changing scientific solution to global warming will be as nothing if we cannot address the second part of the ‘achievable solution’, which is ‘staring us in the face’. It is unlikely that any major scientific discovery will be made by the likes of a philanthropic soul such as Tim Berners-Lee, who refused to patent his invention of the world wide web and simply presented it as a gift to the world. (Had he patented this invention and insisted upon even a micro-charge for each use of the web, his fortune would today certainly exceed those of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett combined.) But without such charity, questions of cost, implementation, ownership and governance will inevitably arise over any discovery. Universal agreement on such a matter would seem to many to be even more unlikely than its discovery.
So how are we to avoid reducing our world to a site of medieval squalor and untold suffering? How is humanity to save itself, to cling on to its present civilised state? Fantasies such as colonising distant planets will remain forever just that. More credible, and already showing signs of embryonic development, is the creation of fiercely guarded, self-sufficient enclaves of ostentatious opulence, whose isolated rarity will probably be matched only by the rarity of taste amongst their inhabitants. Whilst in other, more sinister enclaves, scientific genius desperately strives to transpose human consciousness into digital algorithms on a self-replicating robotic computer, giving it article intelligence… No, the only real and tolerable solution here remains a political one.
Only this will enable the experts to grapple in concerted and effective form with our planet’s mortal problem: humanity irreparably fouling its own nest. The answer that is staring us in the face, the one which remains effectively disregarded in any coercive and meaningful sense, lies in politics. As one disgruntled environment correspondent has put it: ‘So far, United Nations Climate Change Conferences have set numerical limits which have proved little more effective than an exchange of telephone numbers between delegates’. With such powerful, informed and compelling counsel, it comes as little surprise that their arguments collapse in the face of the truant Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg.
Only the political sphere is capable of implementing some universal co-operative effort that is capable of halting, let alone reversing, the present slide into catastrophe. This will require creative political thought of the highest order. Such utterly original political ideas have appeared few and far between in our long history, and this is fortunate – for when they have been put into practice they have almost invariably wreaked deadly consequences. This would seem to rule out any resort to the invention of untried futuristic ideas. Which leaves us with the past. Here lie the ideas which have evolved to bring us to our present state. The distribution of power, economics, justice, liberty, ethics…. All have played their part. And to a more or less degree they have proved an unprecedented success – marred by a number of unprecedented failures: ethnic cleansing, world wars, nuclear mutually assured destruction (MAD), the long blight of slavery and such. Despite these crass mis-steps, the march of progress has given the vast majority of humanity the opportunity to live longer, materially better and more fulfilled lives. Until now. Only now are we faced with the flaws in the accumulation of systems and ideas of governance which have brought us so far. Only now has it become increasingly obvious that there is an auto-destructive element at the heart of our politics.
Yet what is this thing we loosely refer to as ‘politics’? The word itself derives from the ancient Greek πολιτική (politikí). This is rooted in the word ‘poli’, meaning ‘city’, which evolved into city-state, and thence the state itself. Politics can thus be seen as ‘the affairs of state’: how to run a state, how to ensure its effective governance, persistence, and advancement. And this, for the most part, is precisely what politics has done.
So how did it all go so wrong? (And indeed how did it all go so right?) No idea comes into existence of its own accord. It is originally the product of an individual human mind. In order to understand such ideas, we must attempt to understand the people who gave birth to them. What drove this particular person to produce this particular idea? What happenstance of psychology or existence drove them to conceive of such a thing? And what strength of personality, accident of history, or madness of willpower enabled them to implement their idea?
Bearing this in mind, any history of political ideas must to a large extent include the lives of the people who came up with such ideas, as well as the historical circumstances in which they lived. So, besides examining the history of political ideas, this work will also seek to describe the lives – ranging from the pragmatic to the otherworldly, from the embittered to the eccentric – of those who gave birth to these ideas. Perhaps by examining the geniuses, paranoiacs, megalomaniacs, philosophers, charlatans and oddballs who bequeathed us with these ways of how to govern ourselves, we may discover the benefits and the drawbacks, as well as the often inextricable blending of these opposites, which led us into our present condition. It may even grant us a glimpse of some possible way out of this ever-deepening shit-hole into which we are we are so greedily and industriously intent upon digging ourselves. Along with this, we should also examine the major historical attempts which have been convened at times of global disaster with the aim of ensuring that such a lamentable situation does not occur again. For besides a novel concatenation of political ideas, the solution to our woes must surely be preceded by an international congress along the lines of those held at Vienna after the Napoleonic wars, and Versailles after the First World War.
Perhaps all this is best illustrated by a grotesque encounter. One of history’s most daringly original political thinkers was the 16th century Florentine Niccolò Machiavelli, who revolutionised political thought at the beginning of the progressive modern era that now appears to be approaching its end. Machiavelli’s ideas appealed to both the best and the worst in humanity: he remained nothing if not intellectual, witty and perverse. From page to page, even line to line, it is frequently difficult to discern where he is being insightful and where he is being ironic (or both). In his short book of political advice The Prince he skilfully selected incidents from history to illuminate how a ‘prince’ (dictator) could achieve absolute power, and then ensure that he retained this exalted position. (Few of these exemplars fully succeeded, as he was well aware). Machiavelli’s advice involved a pragmatic amoral ruthlessness which has ensured his notoriety through the centuries. Avid readers have included Henry VIII, Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein – none renowned for their sense of irony, it should be noted. By contrast, in Machiavelli’s lesser-known political work The Discourses he offered, amongst other things, many profound and practical insights into how a successful democratic republic should be run for the common benefit of humanity. Yet even here he remains under no illusion concerning the mores of its citizens: ‘Ingratitude is greater in a republic where the people rule ….for ingratitude delights in the heart of the people where the people are lord’.
Machiavelli himself would never rule a state, but in the course of his work as a Florentine diplomat, he encountered and assessed many of the rulers of the period. These included Louis XII of France, the most powerful monarch in Europe, as well as the murderous and unpredictable Cesare Borgia, illegitimate son of pope Alexander VI. Machiavelli’s diplomatic expertise involved dealing with all manner of rulers from popes to deranged petty tyrants of city states. He would also witness a number of pivotal historic events. At the tender age of nine he would be in Florence during the vicious riots following the attempted assassination of Lorenzo the Magnificent, ruler of Florence, when ‘the streets were littered with bloodied limbs’. And 20 years later, as a young man he would be amongst the crowds in the central Piazza della Signoria of Florence when the religious fanatic Savonarola was burned at the stake.
That same year, during the ensuing change of government, Machiavelli was appointed secretary to the Ten of War, the committee which served as Florence’s foreign ministry. As such, he was frequently despatched on diplomatic missions to foreign courts. Such work often entailed him sitting for hours on end in draughty ante-chambers, under the disdainful eye of local dignitaries, waiting upon an audience with some more or less important ruler. To while away the boredom of such tedious diplomatic missions he took to writing personal letters back to his friends in Florence. Along with the regular official despatches he was required to send home, he would include the occasional sealed private letter to a friend. These gossipy informal letters frequently involved exaggerated tales of his misfortunes for the amusement of ‘the boys back at the office’, which soon earned him the nickname ‘Il Macchia’. Besides echoing his name, and possibly alluding (satirically) to his ‘masculo’ (manly) personality, the word macchia also means a blot or blemish. Machiavelli enjoyed cultivating the idea of himself as the black sheep. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a particular letter he wrote to his friend Luigi Guicciardini on 8 December 1509 whilst on a mission to Verona. It is not difficult to see in this characteristic yarn a sophisticated (if inadvertent) metaphor for the entire political process.
Bloody hell, Luigi! How is it that fortune hands it all to you on a platter, when I’m lucky to get even crumbs? While you get a feast of fucking, I’m suffering from a regular famine out here…All this led me into a fine scrape. I was walking down the street, randy as hell, when I came across this woman who launders my shirts. It so happened that she lived in a nearby basement… She asked me to come in so that she could sell me a shirt… So, naive prick that I am, I followed her into this gloomy cellar. Here amidst the dimness I made out a woman cowering in the corner, affecting modesty, covering her body and her head with a towel…My shirt-seller took me by the hand and led me towards her, telling me: ‘This is the shirt I want to sell you, but I’d like you to try it on first before you pay for it’. As you know, I’m really rather a shy fellow, so I was terrified when the shirt-seller slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her, leaving me alone with this woman in the dark.
Having described how he found himself in this unfortunate situation, Machiavelli then hastens to the denouement, sparing no lurid details for the amusement of his friends:
“So to cut a long story short, I fucked her once. Because I has so hopelessly horny I went at it like the clappers, even though her thighs were flabby, her cunt damp, and her breath stank a bit… When I’d finished, I decided to have a peek at the merchandise, so I took a piece of burning wood from the fire and lit a lamp… Cripes! She was so hideous that I almost dropped dead on the spot. The edges of her eyebrows were alive with nits, her dribbly eyes had a huge squint, and one was larger than the other…one of her nostrils was split so you could see her snot…Her mouth was twisted and because she was toothless she couldn’t stop drooling…. ‘What’s the matter, sir?’ she asked, but the moment she opened her mouth her breath stank so much that my stomach turned over. My guts started to revolt, and then they did revolt – so that I threw up all over her…”
A likely story. And one which is doubtless viewed by some as not being ‘politically correct’ – a curious aspersion with regard to Machiavelli, who may be deemed an exemplar of the original meaning of this term. Either way, it takes little imagination to recognise amidst the unsavoury details of this lurid anecdote a Kafkaesque parable of the political process. And as such it is, like politics itself, open to all manner of interpretations. The more we contemplate it, the more they proliferate. We have all been led into that dark cellar, all been deceived, all fallen prey to our own naivety or baser instincts. We have all let ourselves be conned…No matter how we interpret it, politics is unavoidable. (In times of need even hermits are forced to rely upon public hand-outs.) Such is the shirt into which we are all stitched up: a cautionary tale. This is much how politics works – as it did in Renaissance Florence, as it does today, and as it has done through the ages.
Such a jaundiced view is surely necessary if we are not to delude ourselves concerning the mammoth task which lies ahead: the search through history for political ideas that might enable us to save our planet.
From the outset, politics has gained a deserved reputation for its deceptive character and the penalties which result when things go wrong. And now they appear to be going wrong in a way which all but defies our comprehension. We seem to be approaching an end to normalcy in our time. Some see this as taking place spectacularly, like of those ice cliffs vomiting forth into the polar seas, Australia burning, or increasingly virulent pandemics. Others observe it taking place more gradually, like the permafrost of the tundra melting in trickles, insidiously releasing quantities of carbon dioxide and methane to poison into our atmosphere, at the same time exposing frozen dinosaur carcases and other pre-historic detritus amidst a nauseating stench of putrefaction. Similarly, our political quest leads us back to the beginnings of human civilisation, with humanity barely freed from the gore and stench of barbarism, emerging from a life which was aptly characterised by Thomas Hobbes as ‘nasty, brutish and short’.
The earliest general set of laws, upon which any political system worthy of the name may rest, is widely agreed to be the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, which dates from around 1754 BC. This set of 282 laws was carved into a seven and a half foot high stele of igneous stone. The large black stone was discovered in Mesopotamia at the beginning of the last century by the French Dominican archeologist Jean-Vincent Scheil, who would later translate its cuneiform script. Many of its laws concerned administrative matters such as the wages to be paid to an ox-driver, a house builder, or a successful surgeon. (Lack of success in the last field was liable to render the patient incapable of payment.) On this impressive stele – indicatively carved in the shape of a large admonishing forefinger – King Hammurabi promised ‘to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong shall not harm the weak’. Besides protecting the vulnerable ie the majority, this code also prescribed another fundamental rule of law, which would become known in latin as the lex talonis (law of retaliation). This established the judicial principle of retribution commonly characterised as ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…’ Contrary to widespread belief, this was intended to restrict the compensatory act of the victim, and thus prevent any escalation, continued feud, or resort to the endlessness of traditional vendetta. This was a wise lesson, which would over many centuries increasingly be accepted as the civilised norm. Less likely to appeal to modern sensibilities is the fact that retribution was graded according to social status. A free man received more than a slave, a man more than a woman. Here was a law for the rich and a law for the poor, an unspoken aspect of justice which has even outlasted the popularity of vendetta.
The Code of Hammurabi may be the first clear and comprehensive code of law to be carved in stone, but it is far from being original. Historians have suggested that it was almost certainly formulated by a committee of Babylonian scholars drawing on Hittite, Assyrian and Judaic sources, under the guidance of King Hammurabi himself. As such, many have deemed the Hammurabi Code to be one of the greatest works in history created by a committee, bearing comparison to the King James English version of the Bible, which was a similar collective production. However, not only is the Hammurabi Code not original, it often simply plagiarises its sources. This appears to be a common trait of collective works. Even the King James version of the Bible suffers from a similar defect. Many of its passages bear a suspicious resemblance to the translation undertaken some seventy years previously by William Tyndale, who was burned at the stake for his troubles. Any international protocol which attempts to solve our present problems will certainly involve similar plagiarism of various noble historical sentiments – such as Lincoln’s ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’, and France’s ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, to quote two of the more optimistic slogans to have emerged in the course of catastrophic upheavals viz the American Civil War and the French Revolution. However, the immense difficulties involved in any universal treaty become clear when it is seen that even these two high-minded declarations involve their own inherent contradictions. In Lincoln’s case, ‘the people’ cannot be identical in each three instances in any advanced form of government: some ‘people’ will come out on top. Likewise, in the French case, liberty will inevitably lead to inequality. Even so, such plagiarisms would need to be included in any new world order, regardless of contradictions or doubts concerning originality.
It is worth remembering that such questions of authorship, originality and invention would have to wait until 1980 before they were fully conceptualised – by Stephen Stigler of the University of Chicago, who formulated what is now known as Stigler’s Law. Basically, in its widest formulation, this states that ‘no discovery is named after its original discoverer’ . For instance, Pythagoras’ Theorem was well known to the Babylonians over a thousand years before Pythagoras was born; Halley’s Comet was first observed almost two thousand years before it was named after the British astronomer Edmond Halley, and so on. Stigler’s Law is in fact self-fulfilling, as Stigler himself recognised when he pointed out that it had been formulated several decades previously by the US sociologist Robert K. Merton.
As with much of western civilisation, genuine clarity of thought in the field of politics first emerged amongst the Ancient Greeks. In 508 BC the Athenians re-gained control of their city from the Spartans, and the law-maker Cleisthenes was tasked with drawing up a new form of government for the city. His solution was democracy, which comes from the Greek words δῆμος (dêmos) meaning ‘people’ , and κράτος (krátos) meaning ‘power’. In this early form of Athenian democracy all citizens would assemble to vote on civic matters. Only women and slaves were excluded from this process.
Democracy has now become a shibboleth of modern governance. Even those who in practice abhor democracy feel the need to proclaim it, going through the motions of elections – with strictly limited candidates, fixed voting figures, coerced voting, or a combination of all three. Piquant examples of such practices include the 1927 re-election of President Charles D. B. King in Liberia. This has entered the records as the ‘most rigged election ever’, after King received 243,000 votes from an electorate of just 15,000 voters. I myself witnessed the referendum held during 1968 in Greece during the fascist rule of ‘The Colonels’. All citizens were called upon to vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the new constitution drawn up by the colonels themselves,. This installed the army as ‘guardians of Greece’, with ultimate powers over parliament, the judiciary and any other form of civil authority. Voting was obligatory, with imprisonment for those who failed to turn up. A Greek friend of mine arrived at his local polling station determined to vote ‘No’, but was informed that the ‘No’ ballot papers had not yet arrived. Whereupon he was handed a ‘Yes’ paper.
Most modern dictatorships worthy of the name have claimed themselves to be a ‘People’s Democratic Republic’, or some version of this overstated truism *. A rare contrary position was adopted by Karl Marx, who blatantly called for a dictatorship, namely ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’. History would see the first part of his wish achieved at the expense of the second.
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* Government by the people is of course the same as democracy, which is itself a res publica (Latin for ‘the things that belong to the public’ ie the people).
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Some two centuries after the birth of democracy, the Greek philosopher Plato would dismiss this form of government. In part this was due to his elitist view of government, but mostly it was because his beloved mentor Socrates had been sentenced to death by the democratic government of Athens for ‘corrupting the mind of the youth’.
It all began when the Delphic Oracle was asked: ‘Who is the most intelligent amongst men?’ And the answer came: ‘Socrates of Athens’. When Socrates was informed of this pronouncement, he immediately questioned its veracity. How could this be true, when as he claimed: ‘One thing alone I know, and that is that I know nothing’.
Socrates was a difficult character, whose appearance seems to have borne some resemblance to Hobbes’ characterisation of barbarian life ie ‘nasty, brutish and short’. Paradoxically, it was Socrates’ very ugliness, to say nothing of his wayward character and philosophical fearlessness which made him appear so charismatic to the young men of Athens. However, his mind was the very opposite of Hobbes’ barbarian epithet. In order to test the Delphic Oracle’s assessment of his wisdom, Socrates decided to visit the wise men of Athens – the statesmen, the poets, those who claimed to be possessed of particular skills.
One by one he questioned them, employing his dialectic method of philosophy. This conversational approach involved questioning his interlocutors, probing the assumptions upon which their supposed knowledge was based and exposing the flaws in their thinking. Gradually it would emerge that their ‘wisdom’ was in fact a sham. ‘I too, know nothing,’ he would then add. Needless to say, this approach left him with few friends in high places.
Assuming Socrates knew himself as well as he proclaimed, his motives for becoming a philosopher are characteristically perverse: ‘By all means get married,’ he told his students. ‘If you get a good wife you’ll be happy, if you get a bad one you’ll be a philosopher’. Socrates’ wife Xanthippe was renowned for nagging him, and in one famous incident is said to have poured the contents of a chamber pot over his head. Socrates must have been an impossible character to live with. Yet despite their differences, Socrates appears to have respected his marital sparring partner, proclaiming: ‘Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior’. It is worth noting that Plato referred to Xanthippe as a devoted wife and mother – either out of loyalty to his mentor, or his renowned ability to perceive the truth.
Socrates took to teaching his philosophy in the small artisan shops on the edge of the Agora – the main market and meeting place in Athens, from which young men were excluded. Most of the Athenian philosophers conducted their public teaching in the more refined atmosphere amidst the shade of the columns at the north end of the Agora, a spot known as the Stoa Poikile (Painted porch) *. Socrates, on the other hand, was more likely to be found conducting his dialectic philosophy with a group of young students amidst the clamour and bustle of the local ironmonger’s shop.
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- The Stoa Poikile would give its name to the Stoic philosophers who taught here.
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Such a dialectic approach to philosophy should flourish within the freedom of political thought provided by a democratic state. Unfortunately, its natural appeal to the youth of the city, encouraging them to question the wisdom of their elders, soon lost Socrates the few friends he had amongst the more respectable population of Athens. He became known as the ‘gadfly’ of the state, and as such was put on trial before his assembled fellow citizens, charged with corrupting the minds of the young men of Athens.
Socrates’ characteristically wayward and disrespectful behaviour during his trial meant that his assembled peers soon found him guilty as charged. When asked what sentence he thought he should receive, he replied that the state should provide him with free meals for the rest of his life so that he could continue his role as a benefit to the city. Quite why Socrates chose to goad his fellow citizens in this fashion is unclear. He appears to have wished to retain his role as a contrarian to the end. This proved a suicidal approach, and he was sentenced to death. True to himself as ever, he accepted his sentence with equanimity, claiming that philosophy had taught him to have no fear of death.
However, one lasting legacy of Socrates ‘gadfly’ approach has been recognised in the need for a democratic government to include a ‘loyal opposition’, whose task is to question the wisdom of the majority. As we shall see, ‘checks and balances’ are essential to any form of liberal democracy; without an effective opposition, the anomaly of a ‘democratic dictatorship’ can result.
One of Socrates’ best remembered sayings is: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’. In his philosophy, this was intended on the personal level. Only by continually questioning ourselves, our motives, our actions and our beliefs, can we hope to attain an understanding of ourselves, and thus the truth. As we have seen: carry this idea through to the political arena, and it provides a justification for a political opposition. Carry it through to the scientific arena and it provides a method of reaching tested scientific truths. Although Socrates certainly intended this as an inner examination of life, his exhortation to questioning accepted wisdom would become one of the fundamental impulses which guided the advances of western civilisation. Such an attitude, and the consequent advances it encouraged in the personal, political and scientific realms would provide a cornerstone for the progressive element of modern life. Now it leads us one step further: is it time for us to question this very notion of progress, which appears to be losing its positive utility, becoming instead a negative destructive element?
Socrates wrote nothing down. Indeed, he believed that widespread use of the written word would have a disastrous effect on human memory. Most of what know of Socrates was written down by his pupil Plato. Socrates makes many appearances in Plato’s philosophy, much of which is set down in the form of dialogues, where we see Socrates practising his dialectic method on a range of other characters. Despite Plato’s admiration for Socrates, they appear to have been diametric opposites in character, particularly in the way they chose to live their lives and disseminate their ideas. No noisy ironmonger’s shop for Plato. Instead, he established his renowned Academy in a shady olive grove a mile or so north of the city walls of Athens. Above the entrance to his Academy, Plato ordered to be inscribed the words: ‘Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here’. Although the Academy charged no fees, and was open to all (including women), it excluded the hoi poloi (an ancient Greek term meaning ‘the many’ or ‘the common people’)
Plato claimed descent from Codrus, the last of the quasi-legendary Kings of Athens. When he founded his Academy in 387 BC he was around thirty years old, and had just returned from a difficult spell in Sicily as a tutor to an ‘unlearned’ family member of the local tyrant, Dionysius of Syracuse. Unfortunately Dionysius had taken against Plato, whereupon he ordered him to be clapped in irons and sold off at the local slave market for 20 minas. Fortunately Plato was purchased by an admirer, who put him on a fast trireme leaving for Athens. Consequently, it comes as little surprise that Plato wished to have no further dealings with ignorant rabble, be they tyrants or commoners.
All this, together with Socrates fate at the hands of democratic government, certainly coloured Plato’s political thinking. This appear in The Republic, in which he prescribes a somewhat wishful, utopian form of government. Where Socrates questioned the world, establishing himself as a form of permanent opposition, Plato chose to create a world in which intellect and wisdom prevailed.
The Republic is set in the form of a long Socratic dialogue. Here it is generally assumed that Socrates is giving voice to Plato’s own ideas. (He never appears as himself in these dialogues.) At the outset, Socrates and his companions attempt to define the concept of Justice. Socrates argues that it is always in the interests of the individual to be just, rather than unjust. This leads them to attempt a definition of an ideal society or eutopia. (This is not to be mistaken for Utopia, which literally means ‘nowhere’; the original Greek eutopia means a ‘good place’.)
Plato discusses various forms of government, such as tyranny and oligarchy, dismissing each in turn. Democracy too is dismissed on account of it giving excess freedom to its citizens. In such a situation, he argues, people are only motivated by their own wish to achieve power. This risks democracy degenerating into despotism. Such people who attain power under these circumstances are not fit rulers.
In Plato’s ideal society there are three classes. Lowest are the producers and workers, who make goods and provide services. Next are the military class, whose duty is to keep order, and defend the society against its enemies. The highest rung of society is occupied by the Guardians – the philosopher kings. This class consists of rational beings of high intelligence and great self-control, who make decisions for the state and pursue its best interests. In order to avoid corruption in the ruling class, its members live a frugal communal life. Women are not excluded from this order – far from it. Guardians may mate and produce children, but their children must be raised and educated in a communal fashion. The children will never know the identity of their biological parents, and thus will pursue the common good. Only the most wise and virtuous amongst these will become rulers.
This is more of a blueprint than a prescription for an actual society. And it is of course open to all manner of criticism. Why are the makers and doers the lowest of the low, when they are the ones who in fact produce the wealth of the society? What is there to prevent the military from taking over? What really prevents a philosopher king from turning himself into a tyrant? These are ineradicable flaws, and there is no doubt that in reality Plato’s Republic would soon have evolved into a repressive state which had little to do with the common good.
On the other hand, it is Plato who first made a serious and comprehensive philosophical attempt to describe a good and just working society. In his voluminous philosophical writings he would go on to describe the whole ground of philosophy – from the nature of knowledge to individual ethics. What is the good life, he asked. This led him to ask what is a good man? What is a good society? What is justice?… It is little wonder that many have characterised all philosophy since Plato’s time as little more than footnotes to his original philosophy.
By far the most able pupil at Plato’s Academy was Aristotle, who was born in 384 BC in Stagira a small coastal town in northern Greece. His father was personal physician to King Amyntas III, the ruler of nearby Macedon. Owing to their growing power, and their perceived lack of culture, the Macedonians were not popular amongst the city states of the Greek-speaking world, and Aristotle would be perceived by his contemporaries as a Macedonian throughout his life, rendering him something of an outsider in the more traditional hellenic world dominated by Athens and Sparta.
At the age of seventeen, Aristotle travelled to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy, where he soon established himself as Plato’s most talented student. In time, his range of interests would exceed even that of Plato – particularly with regard to the physical sciences, especially biology. Aristotle was 37 at the time of Plato’s death in 347 BC, and left Athens in disgust when he was passed over for the leadership of the Academy – either because of academic politics or anti-Macedonian bias.
Aristotle travelled to Asia Minor (modern western Turkey), where he married Pythias, a daughter (or possibly cast-off concubine) of the local tyrant Hermias. Unlike Socrates, whose lively marriage drove him to philosophy; or Plato, who never married; Aristotle’s marriage was happy, and Pythias soon bore him a daughter. Upon the death of Hermias, Aristotle travelled to the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos, where he is known to have conducted intensive biological research around the lagoon. He also extended his knowledge of marine life, meteorology, and geography through contact with the local fishermen.
Later, Aristotle would be invited by the new king of Macedon, Philip II, to become tutor to his son Alexander. This was the wilful young man who would eventually become known as Alexander the Great. Aristotle appears to have encouraged the ambitions of the young Alexander, implanting in him a belief in the superiority of Greek culture, encouraging him to become ‘a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants’. Such ideas would inspire Alexander on a spree of conquest: first all of Greece, then to Egypt, the Persian Empire and all the way to India. (Had he turned west, instead of east, there would have been no Roman Empire, and he would probably overrun Europe as far as Scandinavia in his quest to turn all into ‘beasts or plants’.)
However, there was much more to Aristotle’s political thinking than simple racism. Although he was aware of empires, such as the one created by his pupil Alexander, he considered the city state to be the most natural community. Aristotle’s deep knowledge of biology led him to conceive of the body politic in essentially organic terms, rather than the more abstract schemata proposed by Plato. For Aristotle, the city state functioned like an organism. Stating that ‘man is by nature a political animal’, he saw the state as the supreme guarantor of all that he valued in humanity. Being a member of a polis, or city state, enabled a citizen to pursue the good life and thus fulfill himself, which was the true aim of human life. This could only be achieved within a political structure whose laws guaranteed the rights of its citizens, protection of private property, civil order and so forth.
On the other hand, Aristotle condemned capitalism and chose to recognise slavery as essential to the functioning of such a state. Politics remained a work in progress for Aristotle, and his researches took a typical scientific approach. Aristotle added to his burgeoning library of scrolls copies of as many constitutions of Greek city states as he could lay hands upon, enabling him to study the foundations and power structures of the various city states throughout the Greek world. In all he would accumulate as many as 170 constitutions, and a number of city states are known to have consulted him when drawing new constitutions.
Aristotle concluded that there were six types of civil rule. The three good types were constitutional government, rule by aristocracy, and kingship. The three bad types were tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. (His two periods under democratic rule in Athens ended in acrimony. First, as we have seen, when he failed to attain the leadership of the Academy; and second, when anti-Macedonian riots forced him to flee the Lyceum, the rival school to the Academy which he had founded in Athens.)
The bedrock of Aristotle’s investigations – scientific, philosophical and political – rested on his idea of teleology. This was the belief that everything in this world exists for a specific purpose. Thus, a fish’s gills are to enable it to breathe under water. In the same way, politics too must serve its purpose. The three good forms of government should guarantee justice. People of equal social rank should receive equal legal and civic protection. But not all people are necessarily equal. Those who contribute more to the life of the city are deemed more valuable. Such is the case where some exceptional class, or individual, prove better rulers than the equality provided by democracy. Even so, an element of inclusion remains necessary. Rulers would do well to remember that the exclusion of those not in power will invariably lead to instability. Constitutions are liable to change when the government is opposed by a large faction who feel themselves excluded from justice and equality. In order to avoid such disruption, moderate government and education for the citizens are recommended.
Having dealt with the basics of practical government, Aristotle cannot resist following in the footsteps of his master Plato, and goes on to outline his vision of an ideal state. Such a city would be small, but large enough to support itself. Its citizens should take part in military service, have the opportunity to own land, and at least feel that they had a share in government. Heavy labour, such as farming, food production, and so forth should be left to a labouring class of citizens and slaves. Meanwhile worthy citizens should be educated with the aim of achieving the good life, which included social skills, ethical behaviour, and focussing the mind on higher things. The aim of any free citizen should not be wealth, the acquisition of possessions or any aspiration to absolute power. Rather, he should strive to achieve the freedom to exercise speculative rational thought. In other words, as a philosopher Aristotle was convinced that philosophising should be the ultimate aim of all free citizens. Aristotle certainly considered this a self-evident truth. Yet herein lay a contradiction. Although contemplative thought may be uplifting, it need not necessarily be an end in itself. Abstract thought was not for everyone. Those of a more utilitarian disposition might be inclined to more practical thinking. Even Aristotle himself applied his speculative thinking to utilitarian ends. Surely citizens indulging in contemplative thought could apply this for the good of the state. Results could include inventions, as well as improvements in the technical, civic and military sphere. Although such a modern interpretation was certainly not Aristotle’s intention, human ingenuity might prevail nonethless.
And this was very much the case. After Aristotle’s death in 322 BC, many of his large library of scrolls (the largest known at the time) would be bought, copied or otherwise find their way to the Library of Alexandria. This centre of learning would become in effect the intellectual powerhouse of the Hellenic world, attracting scholars from far and wide. Beside producing the abstract mathematics set down by Euclid, this also produced the practical mathematician Archimedes, who would become renowned for his discoveries (‘Eureka!’). Typical of these was the ingenious invention of the Archimedes’ screw, which mechanically enabled water to flow upwards and assist vital irrigation *.
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* Though this too may well be subject to Stigler’s Law, as it is claimed that a similar device was in use in Egypt some centuries before the arrival of Archimedes in Alexandria.
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Later, the Alexandria Library would produce Eratosthnes, whose combination of theoretical mathematics and practical knowledge enabled him to calculate with remarkable accuracy the size of the earth and its distance from the sun. At the time, such thought may well have fallen within the bounds of Aristotle’s prescribed speculative philosophy, which was proposed as the ultimate aim of citizens in his political world view. However, over the centuries Eratosthenes’ ideas would accrue increasing practical import, pointing the way ahead in fields ranging from geography to space flight.
Abstract thought of any kind is always liable to influence future practice. In such a way, past ideas ideas can both guide us or haunt us. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the sphere of political thinking (and closely allied economic ideas). As the 20th century economist Maynard Keynes so aptly put it:
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
The sheer range of Aristotle’s thought and investigations – from the invention of logic to his teleological (purposeful) world view, from physics to biology – would prove overwhelming for future thought. When, nearly one and a half millennium after his death, Christianity took on his ideas almost wholesale, his works assumed the authority of absolute religious truth. No thinker, with the possible exception of Confucius, has affected the ideas of more people for so long. Until well into the fifteenth century and beyond, Aristotle’s ideas were as unquestioned as the holy writ. He was the ultimate authority to whom all serious thinkers appealed for verification. If Aristotle said that the world was the centre of the universe, or that eels were generated spontaneously in mud, then this was true. Such ideas would increasingly stifle the creative scientific element in western European thought through the Medieval era, through much of the Renaissance, and into the Age of Reason. Only with the coming of the Enlightenment would the single-handed speculations and observations of this mighty mind be definitively set aside. Only then would empirical and experimental science reveal the true extent of the lacunae in his thought, resulting in it being set aside in favour of more modern scientific thinking. Yet not all his ‘outmoded’ thought would prove redundant. For instance, his ingenious idea that the male octopus uses one of its arms, the hectocotylus, to mate with the female octopus, was derided as late as the 19th century. Only then were Aristotle’s meticulous observations, prompted by the lore he had gathered from the 3rd century BC fishermen of the Lesbos lagoon, proved to be correct.
By contrast, the basis of Aristotle’s political thought, the city state, was being rendered redundant even as he wrote. His pupil Alexander the Great would overrun the city states of Greece before setting out on the epic campaign of conquest that led him the ‘limit of the known world’, which for Europeans of this period was the western approaches to the Indian subcontinent *. This put an end to the city state, ushering in the age of empires, whose political structure did not fit into the city state model. Yet just as we owe the idea of a democratic opposition to Socrates, and the blueprint for an ideal republic to Plato, we owe to Aristotle the pragmatic approach to constitutional politics. When a constitution does not meet the needs of the citizens, it must be modified to accommodate such needs if it is to survive. By studying previous constitutions, we can select such elements as are efficacious to our present time. The relevance of such thinking to the here and now barely needs emphasising.
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* Alexander was well aware that the world extended beyond this ‘limit’. To impress the people who ventured forth after his army had turned back, he ordered his men to construct huge oversized chairs and tables. These were left behind to impress upon those who saw them that Alexander and his army were giants amongst men.
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Paul Strathern is the author of The Florentines: From Dante to Galileo.
