Plato: Statesman 0856686131, 9780856686139

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PLATO: STATESMAN

with translation and commentary by

C. J. Rowe

Λ (Bequestfrom the (Research Library c f (TrevorJohn Saunders, Lecturer in Classicsfrom 1965, (Professor ofgree^!978-1999. £ugust2004

PLATO

STATESMAN

Edited with an Introduction, Translation & Commentary by

C. J. ROWE

ARIS & PHILLIPS LTD - WARMINSTER - ENGLAND

0 .5

C.J. Rowe 199S. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying without the prior permission of the Publishers in writing.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBNs

0 85668 612 3 (cloth) 0 85668 6131 (limp)

Printed and published in England by Aris & Phillips Ltd. Teddington House, Warminster, Wiltshire BA 12 8PQ

Ill

Contents Preface

v

INTRODUCTION

1

Bibliography

21

GREEK TEXT & TRANSLATION

27

COMMENTARY

177

Index

246

V

Preface Attitudes towards the Statesman arc typically mixed. On the one hand, it is generally regarded as a pivotal work in the development of Plato's political thinking, and also thanks to the great myth of the reversal of the universe - as important for our understanding of his view of the physical world. But the proportion of the dialogue which is occupied with these topics is relatively small; a much larger part is taken up with painstaking applications of the procedure of 'division', which it is easy to find tedious. The main character in the dialogue, the *Eleatic Stranger', himself raises questions on more than one occasion about the amount of time which he and his respondent (a younger namesake of Socrates') have spent on such things - admittedly, for the most part, in order to dismiss the idea that it is excessive. But for some readers, of some stretches of the dialogue, there have certainly seemed to be too many words deployed to too liulc effect The result is that until recently, at least in modem times, the work as a whole has been relatively neglected, and whatever attention has been paid to it - with some honourable exceptions - has been directed to its more obviously attractive and interesting parts. But this is in my view unfortunate. Modem readers may well not feel in need of the lesson in Platonic dialectic which appears to constitute the main point of the divisions themselves, but those passages which they have tended to find interesting arc not fully intelligible except in the context of the whole, including the divisions; and indeed it will be my contention that some of those passages have been radically misunderstood, in a way that has seriously distorted our view of Plato's later thinking. I should also claim that the laborious search for the definition of the statesman is in fact essential reading for anyone interested in his metaphysics, his ontology, or his conception of philosophy in general. Once its point, and its principles, are properly grasped, it is also a good deal less tedious, and more subtle, than it has often been taken lobe. My own original encounter with the dialogue was in the company of J.B. Skcmp's translation, which in different versions has been the most widely used in the Englishspeaking world for the last forty years. Subsequently, I used the Skcmp translation in teaching undergraduate courses in ancient political theory; but over the years my disagreements with it about the handling over some key passages and terms became gradually more extensive, and the very elegance of its English seemed increasingly unsuiled to the needs of the students, who looked for a more direct way in to Plato's arguments. They also evidently required more help of other sorts, in the form of continuous notes on what is on any account a difficult work, whether in English or in Greek. The present volume is meant partly as an immediate response to such needs, though it is by no means intended exclusively for student use; it inevitably reflects something of my own battles to understand Plato's text, and the reporting of these may on occasion be more detailed than any undergraduate, or indeed graduate, student might require. Another of the proximate causes of the volume was the Third Symposium Platonicum, which look place in Bristol in 1992 on the subject of the Statesman: many of the ideas contained in the commentary were originally conceived in the course of the editing of the Proceedings of that meeting (published in 199S under the title Reading the Statesman).

VI

I should like to express my thanks to Adrian Phillips for his enthusiasm Tor taking on the project; to the University of Bristol, whose award to me οΓ a University Fellowship in 1993-4 enabled me to start and complete most of it; to the University of WisconsinMadison, and to the University's Institute for Research in the Humanities in the Old Observatory above Lake Mendota, where - as holder of a Friedrich Solmscn Fellowship - 1 finished the work in the late summer and autumn of 1994; and finally to several people who have read and discussed parts of the volume with me, especially Terry Penner in Madison and Luc Brisson in Paris. It is dedicated to Joe Skemp, who would have liked nothing better than to have continued to discuss his second favourite dialogue. I hope he would have approved. Madison, November 1994

Introduction 1. The subjects) of the dialogue The Statesman sets out - formally - to reach an account or definition, agreed between the two protagonists, of what in Greek is referred to as the π ο λ ίτ ικ ο ? (Latinized as 'Politicus'), and π ο λ ίτ ικ η , terms which arc traditionally translated into English as 'statesman' and 'statesmanship'. The second term is short for π ο λ ιτ ικ ή τ έ χ ν η or πολιτική επ ισ τή μ η , which is that body of specialized expertise or knowledge, whatever it may be, in virtue of which a man (in this work, at least, Plato assumes it will be a man and not a woman) will be called π ο λιτικ ό ?. The expertise in question turns out not to belong to any of those who currently occupy themselves with die affairs of stale, in any city; if anyone did possess it, it would justify the abandonment of all existing forms of political arrangement - democracies, oligarchies, and the rest - in favour of the expert rule of this individual. In other words, what turns out to be defined is someone who, if he exists at all, is not actually in power at all (it is agreed that the mere possession of the requisite knowledge is a sufficient condition of being a πολιτικ ό?). He is, as we might put it, the (Platonic) ideal ruler. To modem readers, who suppose - because they have been told so - that the dialogue is about the 'statesman', or statesmen, this is likely to be a surprising discovery, in so far as we recognize all sorts of people as statesmen, if usually elder ones, so that we arc likely to suppose that these, or their essential characteristics, arc going to be the object of the inquiry. But Plato's original audience would probably have been less surprised, since the term π ο λ ιτικ ό ? , as applied to an individual, is not one in regular use, and may well itself be a Platonic innovation. As Hansen points out in his 1983 article (sec bibliography), there arc plenty of Greek equivalents for 'politician', in the sense of 'person involved in the affairs of the city' (ί>ήτωρ, π ο λιτευό μ ενο ?, Βΐ^συ'μβουλο?; 'political leaders' arc ρήτορε? και σ τρ α τη γ ο ί, 'orators and generals', or simply £ ή το ρ ε ? ); but he discovers only one instance of π ολιτικ ό? used by a non-philosophical writer, and that occurs in a speech dating from a time after Plato's death (Aeschines, On the Embassy 184). Plato uses the term without apology,1 and may even be taken as suggesting that it is in current usage: in the Sophist, which first introduces the subject of the π ο λιτικ ό ? for discussion,23the question which introduces it - addressed by the elder Socrates to the 'Elcalic Stranger' (216 d - 217 a)J 1 2

3

Often in the sense of '(so-called) politician/political expert', as c.g. at Apology 21 c: see below, and Skemp, in the original Introduction to his translation of the Statesman, p.19. Along with the 'sophist' (sec below) and the philosopher; the first is treated in the Sophist, but the philosopher - for whatever reason - never receives separate treatment. (The conversation fictionally recorded in the Sophist is supposed to have taken place in the morning, the discussion of the Statesman in the afternoon of the same day - with the Theaetetus treatment of knowledge on the day before. But the important connections of the Statesman arc all with the Sophist, to which it refers, under the guise of referring to that conversation, more than once.) '216 d’, etc. is the standard way of referring to Platonic texts: ^ Ιό ' represents the page number in the relevant volume of H.Stcphanus' 1378 edition of Plato, and 'd' the fourth of

2

INTRODUCTION

is about what it is that people in his part of the world would apply the name to. However that may be, the Greek term πολιτικό? would have had a rather less welldefined reference than our 'statesman'. The question 'what is a πολιτικό??' is not so much a request for a definition of an actual feature of the world (as 'what is a statesman?’ could be, in so far as it might be answerable with reference to actual statesmen), more an invitation to consider the proper specifications for someone charged with running, or helping to run, a city-state or polis.45 This point about the remoteness, or distance, of the definiendum from the actual world is reinforced by the alacrity with which the younger Socrates, who takes on the task of responding to the Stranger in the Statesman, accepts the proposition that 'statesmen'3 possess a kind of expertise, that of 'statesmanship'. It would certainly not have been a normal assumption, in the context within which Plato was writing, that involvement in politics required any specialist qualifications; after all, the basis of Athenian democracy was that any adult male citizen was qualified to contribute to the processes of deliberation and decision-making just by virtue of being a citizen. What may help to condition young Socrates' acceptance of the proposition is the very form of the word πολιτικό?. Adjectives ending in -iko? (which like other adjectives can be made into substantives, as in the case of [6] πολιτικό?) mark out a particular area of specialism, with its associated expertise or τεχνη/έπιστημη - though the kind of expert knowledge involved may not be of a very high order, and feminine substantives ending in πκη (sc. τέχνη, i.e. '[the art]6 of Φ-ing', where 'Φ-ing' stands for something people do in an organized way) will often refer primarily to the relevant activity, as c.g. in the ease of Ρητορική, 'rhetoric', or αριθμητική', 'arithmetic'. In the ease of the 'sophistry', which is die formal subject of the Sophist, the Stranger gets Theaetetus to agree on independent grounds that the sophist ought to be an expert of some sort: the title of 'sophist' itself suggests it (sc. because it suggests the epithet σοφό?, 'wise', and in fact σοφιστή'?,

4

5 6

what arc usually five sections of that page (the line number in the section may also be given). This is what Socrates' question to the Stranger in the Sophist probably amounts to, rather than a request to be told about usage in the Greek colony of Elea in southern Italy: Td be glad to discover from our guest ... what people in that region thought these things [sc. sophist, πολιτικό?, and philosopher] were when he was there, and what they called by these names'. 'Statesman' will hereafter function as the equivalent of the Greek πολιτικό?; but of course the caveats just introduced must continue to be borne in mind. 'Art' is one of the traditional translations of τέχνη (or Επιστήμη, "knowledge', where —as for the most part in the Statesman - this refers to a specific type of knowledge and so functions as a synonym of τέχνη); 'craft' is another (sometimes 'skill'). But some of the things which can be treated as τε'χναι, as we soon discover from the Statesman, arc neither 'arts' nor 'crafts' in our sense: e.g. mathematics, or the playing of games. The generic concept is that of expert, specialized knowledge, and for this reason I have usually chosen to translate τέχνη as 'expertise' (plural kinds of expertise'; Επιστήμη is ‘expert knowledge'). But in contexts like 'the τέχνη o f ...', I have retained 'art o f as a substitute for the gymnastics which would be needed to bring in 'expertise'.

INTRODUCTION

3

before Plato, can itself mean simply 'expert1).7 The first definition is then stated in terms of 'sophistic' (223 b: i.c. σοφ ιστική [τέχνη]); by the end of the conversation, it is clearly established that sophists arc in fact ignorant (267 c, 268 b), and yet the Stranger goes on referring to him by using -iko? and -ικη forms. But when in the Statesman Socrates agrees, at least provisionally, that the πολιτικό? is 'one of the experts’, it is apparently on the basis of nothing except the name.8 In the ease of the statesman, this initial assumption not only turns out not to be disturbed, but actually becomes a vital premiss in the argument which the Stranger mounts to demonstrate the difference between the real statesman and those who currently occupy positions of power in cities (292 b).9 By the end of the dialogue, some kind of definition of the statesman has been offered, together with an extended description of his central function in 'weaving together' the elements of a city (see Section S below). But this is not the only, or perhaps even the main, purpose of the S ta te sm a n . If it were, then the long series of divisions and expositions of methodological points which has preceded would seem excessive. In fact, we find the Stranger and young Socrates agreeing that the aim of the search for the statesman is at least as much for the sake of their becoming better dialecticians, belter able to discuss important topics in a methodical and productive way (285 c - 286 b). This is not by any means to suggest that the formal subject of inquiry is a mere training exercise, or to deny that significant results arc in fact reached about the nature of 'statesmanship', and the proper way to run a city (or state).10 But readers need to be warned in advance that despite its title, this is not an exclusively political dialogue. It is also in part a demonstration lesson in method, and in precision. This is what accounts for its apparent laboriousness: moving carefully means moving slowly, and the degree of tedium which we feel at the pedestrian speed with which the Stranger sometimes moves will (or so he suggests) be in inverse proportion to our devotion to philosophy. Being the inventive and versatile writer that he is, Plato frequently laughs at his own procedures, and 7 8

9

10

What Plato is defining is, of course, quite a different animal: two obvious examples who fit his final definition in the Sophist arc the two verbal prestidigitators of the Euthydemus, the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. 258 b. 'Now tell me,' the Stranger says to young Socrates: 'should we posit in the ease of this person too that he is one of those who possess knowledge, or what assumption should we make?' This person too', i.e. as well as the sophist, who has just been mentioned. The Stranger might perhaps be taken as arguing a fortiori (if we began in the other ease by supposing that the sophist was an expert of some sort, surely we should suppose the same to be true of the statesman?). But there is no positive indication of this, whereas the linguistic argument - however inconclusive - looks ready to hand. Young Socrates is asked at this point whether the assumption should be retained; and by this time he has had ample grounds (if arguments from analogy arc worth anything) for saying that it should. If caring for human beings is at all like caring for other living things statesmanship has been described as a kind of ‘caring for the human herd' - then we should indeed expect it to involve specialist knowledge. The conclusions of the dialogue, of course, relate cxplicidy and directly to the entity of the polis or city-state; but the very generality of those conclusions, which claim to propose something superior to any and every other (possible) form of political organization, invites us to consider their applicability also within the very different context of the modem nation­ state.

4

INTRODUCTION

introduces suitably laborious jokes into the argument. But it is a mistake to suggest, as many have done,11 that the divisions themselves arc not to be taken seriously. Parodying a method is hardly by itself a good way of teaching it, and if we arc inclined to think it merely amusing when man-herding is left bracketed with pig-herding, it is Plato who might well have the last laugh (cf. Clark's essay on 'Herds of free bipeds'). 2. Forms, classes, and division One of the most difficult issues in the Statesman (and about its companion dialogue, the Sophist) is aboul exactly what it is that the celebrated method of 'division' is supposed to be dividing.12 A rough idea of what the method is will emerge from the initial moves in the dialogue. Once the statesman is agreed to be one of those who possess expert knowledge, the next step taken is to divide the different kinds of expert knowledge into two, i.c., roughly, practical and theoretical; since statesmanship seems to belong more to the second sort than to the first (because it has more to do with use of the intellect than actual production), the former is discarded, and the sorts of theoretical expertise arc then divided, again into two; those which arc purely theoretical, and those which have an overseeing role, like that of the master-builder. Statesmanship belongs in this group rather than in the purely theoretical one, so this one is taken up and itself divided; and so on. The final definition, when it emerges, will in its full form mention all the items that were not pul aside in the process, so that in the present ease statesmanship will emerge as a kind of expert knowledge, of the theoretical sort, of the sort that oversees ... (Division will not always be into two, but will always be into the lowest possible number 287 b-c.13) But what is the ontological status of the 'dividend' (i.c. the thing being divided) in each ease? Or, more simply, what kind of thing is it? One answer that has been given to this question is that it is a Platonic 'form' (or 'Form'). What exactly a 'form' is, and indeed whether or not Plato still believed in such things as he did before the Statesman, is a matter of considerable dispute; but on one reading, it is an eternal object, existing separately from, and independently of, the things in the ordinary world which 'partake'14 in it and share its name (so that c.g. there will be a 'Form of Knowledge' to which all actual instances of knowledge relate, and which somehow explains what they arc, while existing over and above them). It is also 11 12

13

14

See c.g. Rosen, ’Plato's myth of the reversed cosmos', pp.66-7. The use of the method in the Sophist is in fact somewhat peremptory and unsystematic by comparison with that in the Statesman; the latter contains by far the most extended example of the application of division in the Platonic corpus. That [division] is dichotomous in large parts of the Sophist and Statesman is not surprising. For [Plato] is not here seeking to bring to light the structure of a whole genus, but to achieve a definition of a particular species. For this purpose the important thing is at each stage to hit on the relevant sub-genus of the superior genus; the irrelevant sub-genus can be thrown away - and it doesn't matter if [t]hcrc arc some other (irrelevant) sub-genera we have not mentioned' (Ackrill, 'In defense of Plato's division', p.384). Or 'participate' (μοέχ««')> which is Plato's standard expression for the relationship between particulars and forms (a relationship whose nature he himself evidently finds difficulty in pinning down).

INTRODUCTION

5

frequently supposed, more puzzlingly, but with some encouragement from Plato himself, that a 'form' perfectly exemplifies whatever it is a 'form' of. It is things like this which Skemp, c.g., means by "Forms' when he says that '[t]hc notion of a "world" of Forms, i.e. of a Reality which is a kind of area occupied by Forms and susceptible of a dialectical Ordnance Survey, is fundamental'.15 Such interpretations16 tend to represent the separateness of forms from particulars in terms of a kind of religious transcendence; and it is certainly true both that Plato sometimes calls the forms 'divine', and that he is capable of describing the philosopher's progress towards knowledge in terms of a religious initiation (as he docs c.g. in the Symposium, drawing on the rites of Elcusis). But if this, quasi-religious, aspect is supposed still to be part of the conception of 'forms' attributed to the Statesman, it must be a serious question why over and over again young Socrates is asked to think about familiar types of things, and to respond on the basis of his experience of them. If what he and the Stranger arc talking about is really a set of visionary objects, that (with the possible exception of one passage, for which see below) could only be gathered by importing what we think we know about what Plato says in other dialogues. On the other hand, there arc certainly some important elements of truth in this reading of division. In particular, whatever else it might be, the method is not simply a way of making a taxonomic classification of the world of experience; for otherwise the Stranger would not be able to use it to reach the conclusions he docs about the 'statesman'. As we have seen, what he defines as statesmanship is something essentially different from anything that is instantiated in any actual city. There may be some actual (true) statesmen living out their lives as private citizens, people who fulfil the sole requirement of possessing the relevant expertise; but even if there did not exist any such people, the Stranger's conclusion would not be affected in the least - this would still be what statesmanship, really and genuinely, is. Any account of the Statesman will have to do justice both to this point and to the plain fact that what the Stranger and young Socrates arc actually discussing is nevertheless, for the most part, the familiar world around us. The situation is not made easier by some aspects of the language of the Statesman. The Stranger’s name for what is divided, and what it is divided into, is cISo?, or ye νος, with a supporting role played by l6ca (φΟλον, φυσι?, χόρο? and σχήμα arc other possibilities: Plato rarely likes to lie himself to a fixed technical vocabulary). Now the first and third of these terms arc actually regularly employed, in other dialogues, for 'forms'; and yet here, as I have said, what is divided docs not look much like the traditional forms - not only is no effort made to distinguish or separate the