Political Agreement in Plato’s Republic and Statesman (original) (raw)

In this paper, I identify three problems around political agreement, as Plato conceives it in the Republic. (1) One foundational principle of the kallipolis is that philosophers should rule. But, as Plato himself notes, there is a great deal of conventional prejudice against philosophers, and thus the majority can be expected to be hostile to the proposal that philosophers should rule. Plato advances the view that such conventional prejudice can be reversed. (2) Even if conventional prejudice can be reversed, however, there is a second and more serious problem. As a matter of psychological necessity, non-philosophers lack epistemic grounds to hold that philosophical rule is the best sort of rule, and thus non-philosophers appear to have no compelling reason to agree that philosophers should rule. I propose a way of addressing the second problem by reading the belief “philosophers should rule” extensionally. Myths and stories can persuade non-philosophers to hold the extensional belief, even if they do not share grounds for this belief with philosophers. (3) However, if we hold that political agreement consists of extensional beliefs as above, this sort of agreement seems to provide too slim a foundation for such good-making features of a polis as civic sophrosunê (moderation), unity, and stability. This form of political agreement appears too weak to sustain such considerable political values. I hold that Plato revisits the problem of political agreement in the Statesman. In that work, it is the weak form of political agreement (at best) that obtains between political elites and non-elites. In the Statesman, Plato also introduces a stronger form of political agreement that consists in agreement on normative beliefs, as well as on the grounds for those beliefs. But this stronger form of political agreement only holds among political-ethical elites. The result is that only political-ethical elites in the Statesman form a civically-unified, moderate, and stable political community. Non-elites are “enfolded” but not properly included in this community.