Interpretation - Vol - 23-2 PDF

I
Winter 1996 Volume 23 Number 2
127 Leo Strauss The Origins of Political Science and The

Problem of Socrates: Six Public Lectures
209 Abraham Anderson Descartes Contra Averroes? The Problem of
Faith and Reason in the Letter of Dedication

to the Meditations
223 John Alvis Moby -Dick and Melville's Quarrel with America
Discussion
249 Thomas K. Lindsay Antiquing America: Reflections on Rahe's

Republics
Book Reviews
297 Mark Lilla Ni Socrate, ni Jesus, Review of Pourquoi nous
ne sommes pas nietzscheens, edited by

Alain Renaut and Luc Ferry
303 Will Morrisey The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy:

Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, by
Seth Benardete
307 Susan Orr Jew and Philosopher: The Return to

Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo
Strauss, by Kenneth Hart Green
Interpretation
Editor-in-Chief Hilail Gildin, Dept. of Philosophy, Queens College
Executive Editor Leonard Grey
General Editors Seth G. Benardete Charles E. Butterworth
Hilail Gildin Robert Horwitz (d. 1987)
Howard B. White (d. 1974)
Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell Joseph Cropsey Ernest L. Fortin

John Hallowell (d. 1992) Harry V. Jaffa
David Lowenthal Muhsin Mahdi Harvey C. Mansfield
Arnaldo Momigliano (d. 1987) Michael Oakeshott
(d. 1990) Ellis Sandoz LeoStrauss (d. 1973)
Kenneth W. Thompson
International Editors Terence E. Marshall Heinrich Meier
Editors Wayne Ambler Maurice Auerbach Fred Baumann =
Michael Blaustein Patrick Coby Thomas S. Engeman

Edward J. Erler Maureen Feder-Marcus
Steven Harvey Pamela K. Jensen Ken Masugi
Grant B Mindle Will Morrisey Susan Orr
.
Charles T. Rubin Leslie G. Rubin Susan Shell

Richard Velkley Bradford P. Wilson Michael Zuckert
Catherine Zuckert
Manuscript Editor Lucia B. Prochnow
Subscriptions Subscription rates per volume (3 issues):
individuals $25
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or longer) or $1 1 by air.
.00
Payments: in U.S. dollars and payable by

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(or the U.S. Postal Service).
The Journal Welcomes Manuscripts in Political Philosophy as Well as Those

in Theology, Literature, and Jurisprudence.
contributors should follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 13th ed. or manuals
based on it; double-space their manuscripts, including notes; place references in the
text, in endnotes or follow current journal style in printing references. Words from
languages not rooted in Latin should be transliterated to English. To ensure
impartial judgment their manuscripts, contributors should omit mention of their
of
other work; put, the title page only, their name, any affiliation desired, address
on
with postal/zip code in full, and telephone. Contributors using computers should, if
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clear copies, which will not be returned.
Composition by Eastern Composition, Inc.,

Binghamton, N.Y. 13905 U.S.A.
Printed and bound by Wickersham Printing Co.,
Lancaster, PA 17603 U.S.A.
Inquiries: (Mrs.) Guadalupe S. Angeles, Assistant to the Editor,
interpretation, Queens College, Flushing, N.Y.
11367-1597, U.S.A. (718)997-5542
Interpretation
Winter 1QQ6 -A
Vnlnmp
Volume 9^
23 Mumhpr 9
Number 2
Leo Strauss The Origins of Political Science and The

Problem of Socrates: Six Public Lectures 127
Abraham Anderson Descartes Contra Averroes? The Problem of
Faith and Reason in the Letter of Dedication

to the Meditations 209
John Alvis Moby-Dick and Melville's Quarrel with America 223
Discussion
Thomas K. Lindsay Antiquing America: Reflections on Rahe's

Republics 249
Book Reviews
Mark Lilla Ni Socrate, ni Jesus, Review of Pourquoi nous
ne sommes pas nietzscheens, edited by

Alain Renaut and Luc Ferry 297
Will Morrisey The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy:

Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, by
Seth Benardete 303
Susan Orr Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides

in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss, by
Kenneth Hart Green 307
Copyright 1996 interpretation
ISSN 0020-9635
Interpretation
Editor-in-Chief Hilail Gildin, Dept. of Philosophy, Queens College
Executive Editor Leonard Grey
General Editors Seth G. Benardete Charles E. Butterworth
Hilail Gildin Robert Horwitz (d. 1987)
Howard B. White (d. 1974)
Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell Joseph Cropsey Ernest L. Fortin

John Hallowell (d. 1992) Harry V Jaffa
David Lowenthal Muhsin Mahdi Harvey C. Mansfield
Arnaldo Momigliano (d. 1987) Michael Oakeshott
(d. 1990) Ellis Sandoz Leo Strauss (d. 1973)
Kenneth W. Thompson
International Editors Terence E. Marshall Heinrich Meier
Editors Wayne Ambler Maurice Auerbach Fred Baumann
Michael Blaustein Patrick Coby Thomas S. Engeman
Edward J. Erler Maureen Feder-Marcus
Steven Harvey Pamela K. Jensen Ken Masugi
Grant B Mindle Will Morrisey Susan Orr
.
Charles T. Rubin Leslie G. Rubin Susan Shell

Richard Velkley Bradford P. Wilson Michael Zuckert
Catherine Zuckert
Manuscript Editor Lucia B. Prochnow
Subscriptions Subscription rates per volume (3 issues):
individuals $25
libraries and all other institutions $40
students (four-year limit) $16
Single copies available.
Postage U.S.: Canada $4.50 extra;

outside
elsewhere$5.40 extra by surface mail (8 weeks

or longer) or $1 1.00
by air.
Payments: in U.S. dollars and payable by
a financial institution located within the U.S.A.
(or the U.S. Postal Service).
The Journal Welcomes Manuscripts in Political Philosophy as Well as Those

in Theology, Literature, and Jurisprudence.
contributors should follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 13th ed. or manuals
based on it; double-space their manuscripts, including notes; place references in the
text, in endnotes or follow current journal style in printing references. Words from
languages not rooted in Latin should be transliterated to English. To ensure
impartial judgment of their manuscripts, contributors should omit mention of their
other work; put, on the title page only, their name, any affiliation desired, address
with postal/zip code in full, and telephone. Contributors using computers should, if
possible, provide a character count of the entire manuscript. Please send three
clear copies, which will not be returned.
Composition by Eastern Composition, Inc.,

Binghamton, N.Y. 13905 U.S.A.
Printed and bound by Wickersham Printing Co.,
Lancaster, PA 17603 U.S.A.
Inquiries: (Mrs.) Guadalupe S. Angeles, Assistant to the Editor,
interpretation, Queens College, Flushing N Y
11367-1597, U.S.A. (718)997-5542
The Origins of Political Science and the
Problem of Socrates
Six Public Lectures by Leo Strauss
Edited by
David Bolotin
St. John's College, Santa Fe
Christopher Bruell
Boston College
Thomas L. Pangle
University of Toronto
The following lectures are part of a series of lectures by the late Leo
Strauss which Interpretation has undertaken to publish. The editors of these
lectures for Interpretation have been able to obtain copies or transcripts of
the lectures from various sources: none of the lectures was edited by Pro
fessor Strauss for the purposes of publication nor even left behind by him
among his papers in a state that would have suggested a wish on his part that
it be published posthumously. In order to underline this fact, the editors
have decided to present them as they have found them, with the bare mini
mum of editorial changes.
These six lectures were delivered by Professor Strauss between October

27 and November 7, 1958, at the University of Chicago. They were avail
able to the editors as copies of a mimeographed typescript, which was ap
parently based on a tape recording. The original typescript can be found in
the Strauss archives at the University of Chicago. The typescript contains

some handwritten additions and corrections, and although these are not in
Professor Strauss's own hand, we are told by Professor Joseph Cropsey,
who worked closely with Professor Strauss for many years and who is now
his literary executor, that they might well have been made at his direction.
Partly for this reason, and also because the revisions do seem to be improve
ments, we have chosen to present the revised version in the text, while
indicating what the revisions were in footnotes. We have also indicated in
the footnotes any editorial changes that we have made on our own (except
for a few corrections of misspellings and a few small changes in punctua-
interpretation, Winter 1996, Vol. 23, No. 2

128 Interpretation
tion, which we made without comment). We are grateful to Mr. Devin

Stauffer for his secretarial assistance.
The last five of these six lectures were published previously, in a somewhat
more heavily edited form, under the title "The Problem of Socrates: Five Lec
tures,"
in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the

Thought of Leo Strauss, edited by Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of
[
Chicago Press, 1989 1989 by The University of Chicago]), pp. 103-183.
Lecture Series: The Problem of Socrates
Leo Strauss
(OCTOBER 27, 1958)
I begin with a word of thanks to my colleague and friend Herman Pritchett. I

feel much happier after he said these words because I feel less of an orphan.
Otherwise I would have presented a series of public lectures entirely on my

own responsibility, and I am glad that this responsibility is shared. I am also
glad that the introduction implied that I am a bona fide political scientist, be
cause quite a few passages of these lectures someone might think
are1
very
marginal as far as political science is concerned, an opinion with which I do not
agree.
By political science we understand such a study of political things as is not

subject to any authority, nor simply a part of political activity orsimply ancil
lary to political activity. Originally political science was identified with politi
cal philosophy. The distinction between political science and political
philosophy is a consequence of the distinction between science in general and

philosophy in general, and that distinction is of fairly recent date. Political
philosophy or political science was originally the quest for the best regime or
the best society, or the doctrine regarding the best regime or the best society, a
pursuit which includes the study of all kinds of regimes.
The political philosopher was originally a man not engaged in political activ
ity who attempted to speak about the best regime. If we seek, therefore, for the
origins of political science, we merely have to identify the first man not en
gaged in political activity who attempted to speak about the best regime. No
less a man than Aristotle himself informs us about that man. His name was
Hippodamus from Miletus. Hippodamus 's best regime had three chief charac
teristics. His citizen body consisted of three parts, the artisans, the farmers, and
the fighters. The land belonging to his city consisted of three parts, the sacred,
the common, and everyone's own. The laws too consisted only of three parts,
laws regarding outrage, laws regarding damage, and laws regarding homicide.
The scheme is distinguished by its apparent simplicity and clarity. But, as Aris
totle observes, after having considered it, it involves much confusion. The con
fusion is caused by the desire for the utmost clarity and simplicity. Outstanding
among the particulars which Hippodamus suggested is his proposal that those
who invent something beneficial for the city should receive honors from that
1996 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

130 Interpretation
When examining this proposal, Aristotle brings out the fact that Hippo
city.
damus hadn't given thought to the tension between political stability and tech
nological change. On the basis of some
observations2
we have made closer to
home, we suspect the existence of a connection between Hippodamus 's un
bridled concern with clarity and simplicity and his unbridled concern with tech
nological progress. His proposal as a whole seems to lead not only to confusion
but to permanent confusion, or permanent revolution. The unusual strangeness
of the thought induces Aristotle to give

unusually an the extensive account of
man who had fathered it. I quote, "He also invented the division of cities into
planned parts and he cut up the harbor of Athens. In his other activity too he
was led by ambition to be somewhat eccentric so that some thought he lived in

too overdone a way. He attracted attention by the quantity and expensive
his hair, and also by the adorned character of his cheap but
warm3
adornment of
clothes which he wore not only in winter but in summer periods as well. And
whole
he wished to be known as learned in giving an account of nature as a It

looks as if a peculiar account of nature as a whole, an account which used the
number three as the key to all things, enabled or compelled Hippodamus to
build on it his triadic plan of the best city. It looks as if Hippodamus had
applied a formula elaborated in a mathematical physics to political things in the
hope thus to achieve the utmost clarity and simplicity. But in fact he arrives at
utter confusion since he has not paid attention to the specific character of politi
cal things. He did not see that political things are in a class by themselves. Our
search for the origin of political science has led to
mortifying and somewhat a
disappointing result. Hippodamus may have been the first political scientist; his
thought4
cannot have been the origin of political science or political philosophy.
We may wonder whether this is not5
a deserved punishment for the fact that we
raised the question regarding the origin of political science without having
raised the previous question as to why the inquiry into the origin of our science
is relevant or necessary.
Every concern for the past which is more than idle curiosity is rooted in a
dissatisfaction with the present. In the best case that dissatisfaction proceeds
from the fact that no present is self-sufficient. Given the extreme rarity of
wisdom, the wisdom of the wise men of any present needs for its support the
wisdom of the wise men of the past. But the dissatisfaction with the present
may have more peculiar or more distressing reasons than the general reason.
Let us cast a glance at the present state of political science. What I am going to
say is less concerned with what the majority of political scientists in fact do
than with what the prevalent or at any rate most vocal methodology tells them
to do. The majority of empirical political scientists, at least at the University of
Chicago, are engaged in studies which are meaningful and useful from every
methodological point of view. Political philosophy has been superseded by a
non-philosophic political science, by a positivistic political science. That politi

cal science is scientific to the extent to which it can predict. According to the
The Origins of Political Science 131
positivistic view political philosophy is impossible. Yet the question raised by

political philosophy remains alive. It retains the evidence which it naturally
possesses. It will do no harm if we remind ourselves of that evidence.
All political action is concerned with either preservation or change. If it
preserves it means to prevent a change for the worse; if it changes it means to
bring about some betterment. Political action is then guided by considerations
of better and worse, but one cannot think of better or worse without implying
some thought of good or bad. All political action is then guided by some notion
of good or bad. But these notions as they primarily appear have the character of
opinion; they present themselves as unquestionable, but on reflection they

thoughts6
prove to be questionable. As such, as opinions, they point to such of
good and bad as are no longer questionable, they point to knowledge of good
and bad. Or more precisely they point to knowledge of the complete political
good, i.e., of the essential character of the good society. If all political action
points to the fundamental question of political philosophy, and if therefore the

fundamental question of political philosophy retains its original evidence, polit
ical philosophy is a constant temptation for thinking men. Positivistic political
science is certain that that fundamental question cannot be answered rationally,
but only emotionally, that is to say, that it cannot be answered at all. Positivis
tic political science is therefore constantly endangered by both the urgent and
the evident character of the fundamental question raised by political philoso
phy. It is therefore compelled to pay constant polemical or critical attention to

political philosophy. The most elaborate form which that attention can take is a
history of political philosophy as a detailed proof of the impossibility of politi

cal philosophy, see Sabine, in any manner or form. That history fulfills the
function to show that political philosophy is impossible, or, more precisely,
obsolete. Prior to the emergence of non-philosophic political science men justi
fiably dedicated themselves to political philosophy. Political philosophy was
inevitable before the human mind had reached its present maturity. Political
philosophy is then still for all practical purposes indispensable in the form of
history of political philosophy. Or, in other words, political philosophy is su
perseded by history of political philosophy. Such a history would naturally

begin at thebeginning and therefore raise the question as to the identity of the
first political philosopher. If it does its job with some degree of competence, it
will begin with Hippodamus of Miletus and be satisfied with that beginning.
One may, however, wonder whether this kind of history of political philosophy
is of any value. If we know beforehand that the history of political
philosophy
is the history of a capital error, onelacks the necessary incentive for dedicated
study. One has no reason for entering into the thought of the past with sympa
thy, eagerness, or respect, or for taking it seriously.

Above all the necessary and sufficient proof of the impossibility of political
philosophy is provided not by the history of political science but by present day
logic. Hence people begin to wonder whether an up to date training in political
132 Interpretation
science requires in any way the study, however perfunctory, of the history of
political philosophy. They would argue as follows: The political scientist is
concerned with the political scene of the present age, with a situation which is
wholly unprecedented, which therefore calls for unprecedented solutions, not to
say for an entirely new kind of politics, perhaps a judicious mixture of politics
and psychoanalysis. Only a man contemporary with that wholly unprecedented

situation can think intelligently about it. All thinkers of the past lacked the
minimum requirement for speaking intelligently about what is the only concern
of the political scientist, namely, the present political situation. Above all, all
earlier political thought was fundamentally unscientific; it has the status of folk
lore; the less we it the better; let us therefore make a clean sweep. I do
know of
not believe that this step is advisable. It is quite true that we are confronted
with an unprecedented political situation. Our political situation has nothing in
common with any earlier political situation except that it is a political situation.
The human race is still divided into a number of independent political societies
which are separated from one another by unmistakable and sometimes formida
ble frontiers, and there is still avariety not only of societies and governments,
but of kinds of governments. The distinct political societies have distinct and
by no means necessarily harmonious interests. A difference of kinds of govern

ments, and therefore of the spirit more or less effectively permeating the differ
ent societies, and therefore the image which these societies have of their future,
makes harmony altogether impossible. The best
hope for, from the one can
point of view of our part of the globe, is uneasy coexistence. But one can only
hope for it. In the decisive respect we are completely ignorant of the future.
However unprecedented our political situation may be, it has this in common
with all political situations of the past. In the most important respect political
action is ignorant of the outcome. Our scientific political science is as incapable

reliably to predict the outcome as the crudest mythology was. In former times
people thought that the outcome of conflict is unpredictable because one cannot
know in advance how long this or that outstanding man is going to live, or how
the opposed armies will act in the test of battle. We have been brought to
believe that chance can be controlled or does not seriously affect the broad
issues of society. Yet the science which is said to have rendered possible this
has itself become the locus
of7
control chance of chance. Man's fate depends

now more than ever on science and technology, hence on discoveries and in
ventions, hence on events whose occurrence is by their very nature unpredict
able. A simply unprecedented political situation would be a situation of
vitally
important political conflict whose outcome and its consequences could be pre
dicted with perfect certainty. In other words, the victory of predicting political
science would require the disappearance of vitally important political conflict,

in a word, the disappearance of situations of political interest.
But let us assume that the positivistic notion of political science is entirely
sound. We see already today when that science is still in its infancy that there is
a gulf between the political scientist's and the citizen's understanding of politi
cal things. They literally do not speak the same language. The more political
science becomes scientific, the clearer becomes the fact that the perspective of
the citizen and the perspective of the political scientist differ. It therefore be
comes all the more necessary to understand the difference of perspective and to
perform the transition from the primary perspective, the perspective of the citi
zen, to the secondary derivative perspective, the
or perspective of the political
scientist, not dogmatically and haphazardly, but in an orderly and responsible
fashion. For this purpose one requires an articulate understanding of the citi
zen's perspective as such. Only thus can one understand the essential genesis of
the perspective of the political scientist out of the perspective of the citizen.
The safest empirical basis for such an inquiry is the study of the historical
genesis of political science, or the study of the origin of political science. In
this way we can see with our own eyes how political science emerged for the
first time, and therefore, of course in a still primitive form, out of the pre
scientific understanding of political things. Positivistic political science did not
emerge directly out of the citizen's understanding of political things. Positivis
tic political science came into being by virtue of a very complex transformation
of modern political philosophy, and modern political philosophy in its turn
emerged by virtue of a very complex transformation of classical political phi
losophy. An adequate understanding of positivistic political science, as distin

guished from a mere use of that science, is not possible except through a study
of the political writings of Plato and Aristotle, for these writings are the most
important documents of the emergence of political science out of the pre-scien-
tific understanding of political things. These writings of Plato and Aristotle are
the most important documents of the origin of political science.
The most striking characteristic of positivistic political science is the distinc

tion between facts and values. The distinction means that only questions of fact
and no questions of value can be settled by science or by human reason in

general. Any end which a man may pursue, is, before the tribunal of reason, as
good as any other end. Or, before the tribunal of human reason, all ends are
equal. Reason has its place in the choice of means for pre-supposed ends. The
most important question, the question regarding the ends, does not lie within
the province of reason at all. A bachelor without kith and kin who dedicates his
whole life to the amassing of the largest possible amount of money, provided
he goes about this pursuit in the most efficient way, leads as rational a life as
the greatest benefactor of his country or of the human race. The denial of the
possibility rationality, distinguishing

of between legitimate and illegitimate
ends, leads naturally to the denial of the possibility of a common good. As a

consequence, it becomes impossible to conceive of society as a genuine whole
which is capable to act. Society is understood as a kind of receptacle, or a pool,
within which individuals and groups act, or, society becomes the resultant of
the actions of individuals and groups. In other words political society, which is
134 Interpretation
society qua acting, namely acting through its government or as government,

appears as derivative from society. Hence political science becomes an append
age of sociology. Since a choice of ends is not and cannot be rational, all
conduct is, strictly speaking, non-rational. Political science as well as any other
science, is a study of non-rational behavior, but like any other science, political
science is a rational study of non-rational behavior.

Let us then look at the rationality of the study. Scientific knowledge of
political things is preceded by what is loosely called common sense knowledge

of political things. From the point of view of positivistic political science com
mon sense knowledge of political things is suspect prior to examination; i.e.,

prior to transformation into scientific knowledge, it has the status of folklore.
This leads to the consequence that much toil and money must be invested in
order to establish facts with which, to say the least, every sane adult is thor
oughly familiar. But this is not all and not the most important point. According
to the most extreme, but yet by no means uncharacteristic view, no scientific
finding of any kind can be definitive. I quote: "Empirical propositions are one
propositions."
and all hypotheses; there are no final For common sense the
proposition, "Hitler's regime was destroyed in 1945", is a final proposition, in

no way subject to future revision or in no way a hypothesis. If propositions of
this kind and nature must be understood as hypotheses requiring further and
further testing, political science is compelled to become ever more empty and
ever8
more remote from what the citizen cannot help regarding as the important
issues. Yet science cannot rest satisfied with establishing facts of its observa
tion;9
it consists in inductive reasoning, or it is concerned with prediction, or
the discovery of causes. As regards causality, present-day positivism teaches
that there can be no other justification for inductive reasoning than that it suc
ceeds in practice. In other words, causal laws are no more than laws of proba
bility. Probability statements are derived from frequencies observed and include
the assumption that the same frequencies will hold approximately for the fu
ture. But this assumption has no rational basis. It is not based on any evident
necessity; it is a mere assumption. There is no rational objection to the assump
tion that the universe will disappear any moment, into
not only thin air, but into
absolute nothingness, and that this happening will be a vanishing not only into
nothing, but through nothing as well. What is true of the possible end of the
world must apply to its beginning. Since the principle of
causality has no evi
dence, nothing prevents us from assuming that the world has come into being
out of nothing and through nothing. Not
only has rationality disappeared from
the behavior studied by the science, the of that study itself has be
rationality
come radically problematical. All coherence has gone.
Rationality may be
thought to survive by virtue of the retention of the principle of contradiction as
a principle of necessary and universal validity. But the status of this

principle
has become wholly obscure since it is neither empirical nor dependent on
any
agreement, convention, or logical construction. We are then entitled to say that
positivistic science in general10
and therefore positivistic political science in

particular are characterized by the abandonment of reason, or by the flight from
reason. The flight from scientific reason which has been noted with some regret
in certain quarters is the perfectly rational reply to the flight of science from
reason. However this may be, the abandonment of reason, hitherto discussed,
is only the weak, academic, not to say anemic reflection, but by no means
an"
broader deeper
reflection,12
uninteresting and unimportant of a much and pro
cess whose fundamental character we must try to indicate.

Present day positivism is logical positivism. With some justice it traces its
origins to Hume. It deviates from Hume in two decisive respects. In the first
place: deviating from Hume's teaching, it is a logical teaching, that is to say, it
is not a psychological teaching. The supplement to the critique of reason in
logical positivism is symbolic logic and theory of probability. In Hume that

supplement is belief and natural instinct. The sole concern of logical positivism
is a logical analysis of science. It has learned from Kant, the great critic of
Hume, that the question of the validity of science is radically different from the
question of its psychological genesis. Yet Kant was enabled to transcend psy
chology because he recognized what he called an a priori, let us say, act of
pure reason. Hence science was for him the actualization of a potentiality natu
ral to man. Logical positivism rejects the a priori. Therefore it cannot avoid
becoming involved in psychology, for it is impossible to avoid the question,

why science? On the basis of the positivistic premises, science must be under
stood as the activity of a certain kind or organism, as an activity fulfilling an
important function in the life of this kind of organism. In brief, man is an
organism, which cannot live, live well, without being able to predict, and
or
the most efficient form of prediction is science. This way of accounting for
science has become extremely questionable. In the age of thermo-nuclear weap

ons the positive relation of science to human survival has lost all the apparent
evidence which it formerly may have possessed. Furthermore, the high devel
industrial the predominance of industrial
society;9
opment of science requires
societies renders ever more difficult the survival of underdeveloped societies,

or pre-industrial societies. dares to say that the development of these
Who still
societies, that is to say their transformation, that is to say, the destruction of

their traditional manner of living, is a necessary prerequisite for these people's
living, or living well? Those people survived and sometimes lived happily
without any science. While it becomes necessary to trace science to the needs
of a certain kind of organism, it is impossible to do so. For to the extent to
which science could be shown to have a necessary function for the life of man,
one would in fact pass a rational value judgment on science, and rational value
judgments are declared to be impossible by this same school of thought.
By this remark we touch on the second decisive respect in which present-day

positivism deviates from Hume. Hume was still a political philosopher. He still
taught that there are universally valid rules of justice, and that those rules may
136 Interpretation
properly be called natural law. This means from the point of view of his present
day followers that his thought antedated the discovery of the significance of
cultural diversity or of historical change. As everyone knows, the most popular
argument for proving the impossibility of rational or universally valid value
judgments is taken from the fact of such diversity and change. All day
present
thought is separated from Hume by what is sometimes called the discovery of

history. The vulgar expression of this decisive change is the trite proposition:
man does not think in a vacuum. All thought is said to be essentially dependent
on the specific historical situation in which it occurs. This applies not only to
the content of thought, but to its character as well. Human science itself must
be understood as a historical phenomenon. It is essential not to man but to a
certain historical type of man. Therefore the full understanding of science can
not be supplied by the logical analysis of science, or by psychology. The prem
ises of science, or the essential character of science, as it is laid down by the

logical analysis of science, owe their evidence, or meaningfulness, to history,
sinceeverything which can possibly become the object of thought is as such
dependent on the structure of thought, or, if you wish, of logical constructs.
The fundamental science will be a historical psychology. But this fundamental

science cannot have its locus outside of history. It is itself historical. History
must be conceived as a process which is in principle unfinishable and whose
course is unpredictable. The historical process is not completed and it is not
rational. Science in hence the fundamental science, which is histor

general and
ical psychology in particular, is located within the process. It depends on prem

ises which are not evident to man as man but which are imposed on specific
men, on specific historical types, by history.
The first man who drew this conclusion from the discovery of history was
Nietzsche. He was therefore confronted with this basic difficulty. The funda
mental science, historical psychology, claims as science to be objective, but
owing to its radically historical character it cannot help being subjective. It is

easy to say that Nietzsche never solved this problem. It is most important for us
to note that he was distinguished from all his contemporaries by the fact that he
saw an abyss where the others saw only a reason for self-complacency. He saw
with unrivaled clarity the problem of the twentieth century, because he had
diagnosed more clearly than anyone else, prior to the World Wars at any rate,
the crisis of modernity. At the same time he realized that the
necessary, al
though not the sufficient reason for the overcoming of this crisis, or for a
human future, was a return to the origins.Nietzsche regarded modernity as a
toward a goal, or the project of a goal, which might
very well be
movement
reached, but only at the price of the most extreme degradation of man. He
described that goal most forcefully in Zarathustra's speech on the Last Man.
The Last Man is a man who has achieved happiness. His life is free from all
suffering, misery, insoluble riddles, conflicts, and inequality, and therefore free
from all great tasks, from all heroism, and from all dedication. The characteris-
tic proximate condition of this life is the availability of what we are entitled to
call psychoanalysis and tranquilizers. Nietzsche believed that this life was the
intended or unintended goal of anarchism, socialism, and communism, and that
democracy and liberalism were only half-way houses on the road to commu
nism. Man's possible humanity and greatness, he held, requires the perpetuity
of conflict, of suffering; one must therefore reject the very desire for the re
demption from these evils in this life, to say nothing of a next.
The modern project stands or falls by science, by the belief that science can
in principle solve all riddles and loosen all fetters. Science being the activity
of3
the final form of ration

project14
reason par excellence, the modern appears as
alism, of the belief in the unlimited power of reason and in the essentially
beneficent character of reason. Rationalism is optimism. Optimism was origi
nally the doctrine that the actual world is the best possible world because noth
ing exists of whose existence a sufficient reason cannot be given. Optimism

became eventually the doctrine that the actual world can and will be trans
formed by man into the best imaginable world, the realm of freedom, freedom
from oppressions, scarcity, ignorance, and egoism, heaven on earth. The re
action to it calls itself pessimism, that is to say, the doctrine that the world is
necessarily evil, that the essence of life is blind will, and that salvation consists
in negating world or life. Politically speaking this meant that the reply to the
atheism of the left, communism, was an atheism of the right, an unpolitical
atheism with political implications, the pessimism of Schopenhauer, Nietz

sche's teacher. Schopenhauer's pessimism did not satisfy Nietzsche because
Schopenhauer was compelled by his premises to understand the negating of life
and world, or what he called saintliness, as a work or product of life and world.
World and life cannot be legitimately if they are the cause of saintli
negated
ness and salvation. Schopenhauer's pessimism did not satisfy Nietzsche for the
further reason that the approaching crisis of the twentieth century seemed to
call for a counter position which was no less militant, no less prepared to
sacrifice everything for a glorious future, than communism in its way was. The
passive pessimism of Schopenhauer had to give way to Nietzsche's active
pessimism. It was in Nietzsche's thought that the attack on reason, of which
the flight from reason is only a pale reflex, reached its most intransigent
form.
Nietzsche first presented his thought in a book called The Birth of Tragedy
Out of the Spirit of Music. This book is based on the premise that Greek culture
is the highest of all cultures, and that Greek tragedy, the tragedy of Aeschylus
and Sophocles, is the peak of that peak. The decay of tragedy begins with
Euripides. Here we are confronted with a strange self contradiction in the tradi
tional admiration for classical Greek antiquity. The tradition combines the high
est admiration for Sophocles with the for Socrates, for the
highest admiration
tradition believed in the harmony of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Yet
according to the clearest pieces of evidence, among which a Delphic Oracle is

138 Interpretation
not the least important, Socrates belongs together not with Sophocles, but with
Euripides. There is a gulf, an unbridgeable gulf, between classical tragedy at its

height and Socrates. Socrates did not understand classical tragedy. Socrates
through his influence on Euripides and others destroyed classical tragedy. In
order to achieve this supreme act of destruction, Socrates must have had a truly
demonic power, he must have been a demi-god. Not his knowledge, but his
instinct compelled him to regard knowledge and not instinct as the highest, to
prefer the lucidity of knowledge and insight, the awakeness of criticism, and
the precision of dialectics, to instinct, divining, and creativity. As a genius, and
even the incarnation of critical thought, he is the non-mystic, and the non-artist
Socrates'
par excellence. praise of knowledge means that the whole is intelli
gible and that knowledge of the whole is the remedy for all evils, that virtue is
knowledge and that the virtue which is knowledge is happiness. This optimism
is the death of tragedy. Socrates is the proto-type and first ancestor of the
theoretical man, of the man for whom science, the quest for truth, is not a job
or a profession but a way of life, that which enables him to live and to die.
Socrates is therefore not only the most problematic phenomenon of antiquity
but "the in the
mankind"
one turning point and vortex history of
In shrill and youthful accents Nietzsche proclaims Socrates to be the origina
tor of rationalism, or of the belief in reason, and to see in rationalism the most
fateful strand in the history of mankind. We shall be less repelled by
Nietzsche's partly indefensible statement if we make an assumption which
Nietzsche fails to make and to which he does not even refer, but which Socra
tes made, the assumption that the thesis of the intelligibility of the whole means
the following. To understand something means to understand it in the light of

purpose. Rationalism is indeed optimism, if rationalism implies the assumption
of the initial orfinal supremacy of the good. Rationalism is indeed optimism if

rationalism demands a teleological understanding of the whole. There is good
evidence for the assertion that Socrates originated philosophic teleology.
According to the tradition it was not Hippodamus from Miletus , but Socrates
who founded political philosophy. In the words of Cicero, which have fre
quently been quoted, "Whereas philosophy prior to Socrates was concerned
with numbers and motions and with whence all things came and where
they go,
Socrates was the first to philosophy down from heaven and to
call place it in
cities, and even to introduce it into the household, and to compel to
bad."
philosophy
inquire about life and manners and about good and In other words, Soc
the first to the central theme of
rates was make
philosophy human action, that
is to say, purposeful activity, and hence to understand purpose as a key to the
whole.
I have tried to show why it has become necessary for us to study the origin
of political science. This means, as appears now, that it is
necessary for us to
study the problem of Socrates. A few words in conclusion.
The problem of
Socrates is ultimately the question of the worth of the Socratic position. But it
The Origins of Political Science 1 39
is primarily technical question, a merely historical question. Socrates

a more
never wrote a line. We know Socrates only from four men who were more or
less contemporary with him. Aristophanes 's comedy the Clouds, Xenophon's
Socratic writings, the Platonic dialogues, and a number of remarks by Aristotle
are the chief and most important sources. Of these four sources Xenophon's
Socratic writings appear at first glance the most important ones, because Xeno
phon is the only of these four men who was a
contemporary of Socrates and at
the same time the who15
has in deed that he

man shown was able and willing to
Thucydides'
write history, for Xenophon wrote the famous continuation of His
tory. But I shall not in my discussion begin with an analysis of Xenophon, but I
shall follow the chronological order, because the oldest statement on Socrates
which we possess in completeness is Aristophanes 's comedy, the Clouds, to
which I will devote the next meeting.
(OCTOBER 29, 1958)
Of the four chief sources on which we depend if we wish to understand the

thought of Socrates, Aristophanes 's Clouds is the first in time. The first impres
sion which anyone may receive of Socrates from the Clouds was expressed by
Nietzsche in terms like these. Socrates belongs to the outstanding seducers of
the people who are responsible for the loss of the old Marathonian virtue of
body and soul, or for the dubious enlightenment which is accompanied by the
decay of virtue of body and soul. Socrates is in fact the first and foremost
sophist, the mirror and embodiment of all sophistic tendencies. This presenta
tion of Socrates fits perfectly into the whole work of Aristophanes, the great
reactionary who opposed with all means at his disposal

things, all new-fangled
be it the democracy, the Euripidean tragedy or the pursuit of Socrates. The

point of view from which Aristophanes looks at contemporary life is that of
justice, old-fashioned justice. Hence that novel phenomenon Socrates appears
to him as a teacher of injustice and even of atheism. Aristophanes 's Socrates is

not only extremely but extremely foolish as well and hence utterly ridicu
evil
lous. He meets his deserved fate: a former disciple whose son had been com
pletely corrupted by Socrates burns down Socrates 's thinktank, and it is only a
ridiculous accident if Socrates and his disciples do not perish on that
lucky and
occasion;they deserve to perish. The Clouds are then an attack on Socrates.
The Platonic Socrates, when defending himself against his official accusation,
almost goes so far as to call the Aristophanean comedy an accusation of Socra
tes, the first accusation which became the model and the source of the second
and final accusation. But even this expression may well appear to be too mild.
Especially if the comedy is viewed in the light of its apparent consequences and
of its wholly unfounded character, one must describe Aristophanes 's action as a
calumny. As Plato says in his Apology, he did none of the things which
Aris-
140 Interpretation
tophanes attributed to him. In the Clouds Socrates appears as a sophist and a
natural philosopher, whereas Socrates knew nothing of natural philosophy and

was of course the sworn enemy of sophistry. And, finally, Aristophanes 's
comic treatment of Socrates, a treatment characterized by the utmost levity,

must appear to be shocking to the highest degree if one looks forward to Socra
tes 's tragic end.
Aristophanes'
To speak first of the striking dissimilarity between s Socrates

and the true Socrates, i.e., the Socrates whom we know through Plato and
Xenophon, there is Platonic and Xenophontic evidence to the effect that Socra
tes was not always the Socrates whom these disciples have celebrated. Plato's
Socrates tells on the day of his death that he was concerned with natural philos
ophy in an amazing way and to an amazing degree when he was young. He

does not give any dates, hence we do not know for how long this preoccupation
with natural philosophy lasted whether it did not last till close to the time at
which the Clouds were conceived. As for Xenophon's Socrates, he was no

longer young when he already notorious as a man who was "measuring the
was
air"
or as a man resembling Aristophanes 's Socrates, and had not yet raised the
question of what a perfect gentleman is, i.e., the kind of question to which he
seems to have dedicated himself entirely after his break with natural philoso
phy. It follows that it is not altogether the fault of Aristophanes if he did not
present Socrates as the same kind of philosopher as did Plato and Xenophon.
Besides, if Socrates had always been the Platonic or Xenophontic Socrates his
selection by Aristophanes for one of his comedies would become hard to under
stand: Socrates would have been politically in the same camp as Aristophanes.
And while a comic poet is perhaps compelled to caricature even his fellow
partisans, the caricature must have some correspondence with the man to be
caricatured. After we have begun to wonder whether there was not perhaps a
little bit of fire where there was so much smoke, we go on and begin to wonder
whether Aristophanes was after all an

accuser, enemy an of Socrates. There is
only one Platonic dialogue in which Aristophanes participates, the Banquet.
The dialogue is presented as having taken place about seven years after the
performance of the Clouds. The occasion was a banquet at the end of which
only three men were still sober and awake, two of them being Aristophanes and
Socrates. The three men were engaged in a friendly conversation ending in

agreement about a subject than which none was more important to Aris
tophanes, the subject of comedy. The agreement was an agreement of Aris
tophanes to a thesis propounded by Socrates. In accordance with this is the
Platonic Socrates 's complicated and strange analysis, given in the Philebus, of
the condition of the soul at comedies. In that analysis we discern the following
strand. The condition of the soul at comedies is a mixture of the pleasure about
the misfortunes of one's friends or about their innocuous overestimation of their
wisdom with the pain of envy. Envy of what? The most natural explanation
friend's16
would seem to be envy of one's wisdom. The friend's wisdom
may
not be he believes and therefore he may be somewhat ridiculous, but

as great as
his wisdom
may be substantial enough to afford cause for envy. This analysis
of comedy is
monstrously inadequate as an analysis of comedy in general, but
it makes sense as Socrates's explanation of one particular comedy, the comedy
par excellence, the Clouds. In brief, on the basis of the Platonic evidence it is
no more plausible to say that the Clouds are an accusation of Socrates than to
say that they are a friendly warning addressed to Socrates a warning informed
by a mixture of admiration and envy of Socrates. This interpretation is perfectly

compatible with the possibility that the primary object of Aristophanes 's envy
is not Socrates's wisdom but Socrates's complete independence of that popular
applause on which the comic poet necessarily depends, or Socrates's perfect
freedom. As in kind, the differences of interpretation ultimately
all cases of this
proceed less from the consideration or the neglect of this or that particular fact
or passage, than from a primary and fundamental disagreement. In our case the
fundamental disagreement concerns tragedy. According to the view which is
now predominant, tragedy at its highest is truer and deeper than comedy at its
highest, since life is essentially tragic. In the light of this assumption Socrates's
fate appears to be simply tragic. On the basis of this assumption scholarship
tends to see much more clearly the connection of the Platonic dialogues with
tragedy than their connection with comedy. We need not go into the question
whether this assumption is sound; we can be content with raising the question
as to whether it was Plato's assumption. Plato was familiar with the assump
tion; the prejudice in favor of tragedy is not peculiar to modem times. No one
was more aware than Plato of the fact that tragedy is the most deeply moving
art. But from this, he held, it does not follow that tragedy is the deepest, or the
highest art. He silently opposes the popular preference for tragedy. He suggests
that the same man must be tragic and comic poet. When his Adeimantus had
simply equated dramatic poetry with tragedy he makes his Socrates unob
trusively correct Adeimantus by imputing to Adeimantus the assertion that dra

matic poetry embraces comedy as well. If we do not disregard the fact that the
difference between tragedy and comedy corresponds somehow to the difference

between weeping and laughing, we can bring out the issue involved in this
way. One of the deepest students of Plato's Republic in modem times, Sir
Thomas More, says in his Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation: ". to . .
prove that this life is no laughing time, but rather the time of weeping, we find
that our saviour himself wept twice or thrice, but never find we that he laughed
so much as once. I will not swear that he never did, but at the leastwise he left
weeping.
us no example of it. But on the other side he left us an example of
Of the Platonic and Xenophontic Socrates one can say exactly the opposite.
Socrates laughed once, but never find we that he wept so much as once. He left
us no example of weeping, but on the other side he left us an example of
laughing. He left us many examples of his joking, and none of his indignation.
His irony is a byword. He is not a tragic figure, but it is easy to see how he can
142 Interpretation
become a comic figure. The philosopher who falls into a ditch while observing
the heavenly things or the philosopher who, having
ordinary left the cave of
life, returns to it and find his

cannotway in it, is of course ridiculous, as
Plato's Socrates himself points out. Viewed in the perspective of the non-phi
losophers, the philosopher is necessarily ridiculous, and viewed in the perspec
tive of the philosopher the non-philosophers are necessarily ridiculous; the
meeting of philosophers and non-philosophers is the natural theme of comedy.
It is, as we shall see, the theme of the Clouds. It is then not altogether an
accident that our oldest and hence most venerable source regarding Socrates is
a comedy.
These remarks merely made for the purpose of counteracting certain

are
prejudices. The decision of the question under discussion can be expected only
from the interpretation of the Clouds itself. Such an interpretation will be facili
tated, to say the least, by a consideration of the Aristophanean comedy in
general.
In glancing at modem interpretations of the Aristophanean comedies, one is

struck by the preoccupation of modem scholars with the political background
and the political meaning of the comedies. It is as if these scholars were about
to forget, or had already forgotten, that they are dealing with comedies. When
about to enter a place at which we are meant to laugh and to enjoy ourselves,
we must first cross a picket line of black coated ushers exuding deadly and
deadening seriousness. No doubt they unwittingly contribute to the effect of the

comedies. Still, it is simpler to remember what Hegel has said about the Aris
tophanean comedies: "If one has not read Aristophanes one can hardly know
how robustly and inordinately gay, of what beastlike contentment, man can
be."
Hegel's statement reminds us of the obstacles which one has to overcome
when reading the Aristophanean comedies. For if we desire to understand, to

and to love the Aristophanean comedy, it is
appreciate, necessary that we
should first be repelled by it. The means which Aristophanes employs in order
to make us laugh include gossip or slander, obscenity, parody and blasphemy.

Through this ill-looking and ill-smelling mist we see free and sturdy rustics in
their cups, good-natured, sizing up women, free or slave, as they size up cows
and horses, in their best and gayest moments the fools of no one, be he god or
wife or glorious captain, and yet less angry than amused
at17
having been fooled

by them ever so often, loving the country and its old and tested ways, despising
the new-fangled and rootless which shoots up for a day in the city and its
boastful boosters; amazingly familiar with the beautiful so that they can enjoy
every allusion to any of the many tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and
Eurip
ides; amazingly experienced in the beautiful so that they will not stand for
and
any parody which is not in its way as perfect as the original. Men of such birth
and build are the audience of Aristophanes or (which is the same for
any non-
contemptible poet) the best or authoritative part of his audience. The
audience
to which Aristophanes appeals or which he conjured is the best democracy as
Aristotle has described it: the democracy whose backbone is the rural popula
tion. Aristophanes makes us see this audience at its freest and gayest, from its
crude and vulgar periphery to its center of sublime delicacy; we do not see it
equally well, although we sense it strongly, in its bonds and bounds. We see
only half of it, apparently its lower half, in fact its higher. We see only one half
of humanity, apparently its lower half, in fact its higher. The other half is the
preserve of tragedy. Comedy and tragedy together show us the whole of man,
but in such a way that the comedy must be sensed in the tragedy and the
tragedy in the comedy. Comedy which begins at the lowest low, [ascends to the
highest height,]18 whereas tragedy dwells at the center. Aristophanes has com
pared the comic Muse or rather the Pegasus of the comic poet to a dung-beetle,
a small and contemptible beast which is attracted by everything ill-smelling,
which seems to combine conceit with utter remoteness from Aphrodite and the
Graces which, however, when it can be induced to arise from the earth, soars
higher than the eagle of Zeus: it enables the comic poet to enter the world of
the gods, to see with his own eyes the truth about the gods and to communicate
this truth to his fellow mortals. Comedy rises higher than any other art. It
transcends every other art; it transcends in particular tragedy. Since it tran
scends tragedy, it presupposes tragedy. The fact that it presupposes and tran
scends tragedy finds its expression in the parodies of tragedies which are so
characteristic of the Aristophanean comedy. Comedy rises higher than tragedy.
Only the comedy can present wise men as wise men, like Euripides and Socra
tes, men who as such transcend tragedy.

This is not to deny that the Aristophanean comedy abounds with what is
ridiculous19
ridiculous on the lowest level. But that comedy never presents as
what only perverse men could find ridiculous. It keeps within the bounds of
what is by nature ridiculous. There occur spankings but no torturings and kill
ings. The genuinely fear-inspiring must be absent, and hence that which is most
fear-inspiring, death, i.e., dying as distinguished from being dead in Hades.
Therefore there must be is causing compassion. Also the truly
absent also what
noble. Whereas in Aristophanes 's Frogs Aeschylus and Euripides are presented
as engaged in violent name-calling, Sophocles remains silent throughout. The
Aristophanean comedy while abounding with what is by nature ridiculous on
the lowest level, always transcends this kind of the ridiculous; it never remains
mere buffoonery. That which is by nature not ridiculous is not omitted; it
comes to sight within the comedy. The Aristophanean comedy owes its depth
and its worth to the presence within it of the solemn and the serious. We must
try to find the proper expression for that regarding which Aristophanes is se
rious. The proper expression, i.e., the authentic expression, Aristophanes 's
own expression. Here a difficulty arises. In a drama, the author never speaks in
his own name. The dramatic poet can express what he is driving at by the
outcome of his play. Aristophanes avails himself of this simple possibility: he

144 Interpretation
makes those human beings or those causes victorious which in his view ought
to be victorious, given the premises of the plot. For the triumph of the unpleas-
ing and the defeat of the pleasing is incompatible with the required gratifying
effect of the comedy. However this may be, a drama is a play; certain human
beings, the actors, pretend to be other human beings, they speak and act in the
way in which those other human beings would act. The dramatic effect requires
that this play or pretending be consistently maintained. If this effect is disturbed

because the actors cease to act their parts and become recognizable as actors in
contradistinction to the characters they are meant to represent, or because the
poet ceases to be invisible or inaudible except through his characters, this is
annoying or ridiculous. Hence, whereas the destruction of the dramatic illusion

is fatal to the tragic effect it may heighten the comic effect. Aristophanes is
then able in his comedies to speak to the audience directly; his chorus or his
characters may address not only one another but the audience as well. It is even
possible that the hero of a comedy, e.g., Dicaiopolis in the Acharnians, reveals
himself to be the comic poet himself. At any rate Aristophanes can use his
chorus or his characters for stating to the audience and hence also to his readers
his intention. Thus he tells us that it is his intention to make us laugh but not
through buffoonery. He claims that he is a comic poet who has raised comedy
to its perfection. But much as he is concerned with the ridiculous, he is no less
concerned with the serious, with making men better by fighting on behalf of the
city against its enemies and corruptors, by teaching what is

for the city
good or
what is simply the best, and by saying what is just. Through his work,
well-
being and justice have become allies. He also makes a distinction between the
wise element of his comedies and their ridiculous element: the former should
appeal to the wise, the latter to the laughers. These ipsissima verba poetae
compel us to wonder regarding the relation of justice and wisdom: are they
identical or different? The problem is clearly expressed in the poet's claim that
he made the just things a matter for comedy. However much the poet may
succeed in reconciling the claims of the ridiculous on the one hand and the
serious on the other, or of the ridiculous on the one hand and justice on the
other, a fundamental tension must remain. In a word, justice as Aristophanes

understands it consists in preserving or restoring the ancestral or the old. The
quality of a
comedy on the other hand depends very much on the inventiveness
of the poet, on his conceits being novel. Aristophanes may have been an un
qualified reactionary in political things; as a comic poet he was compelled to be
a revolutionary.
While the tension between the ridiculous and the serious is essential to the
Aristophanean comedy, the comedy consists in its

peculiar greatness of that
being the total comedy in the

orfact that in that comedy the comical is all
pervasive: the serious itself appears only in the guise of the ridiculous. This
must be intelligently understood. Just as literally speaking there can be no com
plete falsehood, given the primacy of truth, there cannot be a ridiculous speech
of some length which does not contain serious passages, given the primacy of
the serious. Within these inevitable limitations Aristophanes succeeds perfectly
in integrating the serious or the just into the ridiculous. The comical delusion is
never destroyed or even impaired. How does he achieve this feat?
It is easy to see how the castigation of the unjust can be achieved
by ridi
cule. For
showing up the sycophants, the demagogues, the over-zealous ju
rymen, the would-be heroic generals, the corrupting poets and sophists, it is
obviously useful to make a judicious use of gossip or slander about the ridicu
lous looks and the ridiculous demeanor of the individuals in question. Further
more, one can hold up a mirror to the prevailing bad habits by exaggerating
them ridiculously, by presenting their unexpected and yet, if one may say so,
logical consequences: for instance, by presenting an entirely new-fangled
Athens, run by women, which is characterized by communism of property,

women and children as the final form of extreme democracy; one can show
how the complete equality of the communist order conflicts with the natural
inequality between the young and beautiful and the old and ugly; how this
natural inequality is corrected by a legal or conventional equality in accordance
with which no youth can enjoy his girl before he has fulfilled the onerous duty
of satisfying a most repulsive hag; the serious conclusion from this ridiculous
scene is too obvious to be pointed out. The very fact that the injustice of the
demagogues and the other types mentioned is publicly revealed shows how
little clever those fellows are; it reveals their injustice as stupid and hence
ridiculous. The ridicule is heightened by the fact that the ridiculed individuals
are probably present in the audience. For the folly ridiculed by Aristophanes is
contemporary folly. The contemporary vices are seen as vices in the light of the
good old times, of the ancestral polity in the perspective of the simple, brave,
rural and pious victors of Marathon, of those who prefer Aeschylus to Euri
pides. Contemporary injustice might arouse indignation and not laughter if it
were not presented as defeated with ease, as defeated by ridiculous means: as
wives'
the war-like Greek manhood is defeated by their abstinence from inter

course and the super-demagogue Cleon is defeated with his own means by the
still baser sausage seller who is boosted by the upper class people, Cleon's
mortal enemies. Yet how can one present the defeat of the unjust by ridiculous
means without making ridiculous the victorious justice? Or, in other words,
how can one present the just man without destroying the effect of the total
comedy? Aristophanes solves this difficulty as follows. The victory of the just
or the movement from the ridiculousness of contemporary folly to

political
ancient soundness is a movement toward the ridiculous of a different kind. The

just man is a man who minds his own business, the opposite of a busybody, the
man who loves the retired, quiet, private life. Living at home, his farm, he
on
enjoys the simple natural pleasures: food, drink and, last but by no means least,
love. He enjoys these pleasures frankly. He gives his enjoyment a frank, a
unrestrained expression. He calls a spade a spade. If he does this as a
wholly
146 Interpretation
character on the stage, he says in public what cannot be said in public with
propriety: he publishes that private which cannot with propriety be published;

and this is ridiculous. Hence the victory of justice is comically presented as a
movement from the ridiculousness of public folly to the ridiculous of the pub
lication of the essentially private: of the improper utterance of things which
everyone privately because they are by nature enjoyable.

enjoys
A major theme, the first theme of the Aristophanean comedy, is then the
tension between the city, the political community, and the family or the house
hold. The bond of the family is love, and in the first place the love of husband
and wife, legal eros. The love of the parents for the children appears most
characteristically in the case of the mother who suffers most when her sons are
sent into wars by the city. No such natural feelings bind mothers to the city.
Thus one might think that the family should be the model for the city. In his
Assembly of Women Aristophanes has shown the fantastic character of this
thought; there he presents the city as transformed into a household, therefore
lacking private property of the members and therefore ruled by women. Nev
ertheless the importance which Aristophanes assigns to the tension between
family and city leads one to surmise that his critique is directed not only against
the decayed city of his time but extends also to the healthy city or the ancestral
polity. The hero Acharnians, Dicaiopolis,
of the who is clearly identified with
the poet himself, privately makes peace with the enemy of the city while every
one else is at war. He is persecuted for this act of high treason not only by the
war party but precisely by his rustic neighbors who are wholly imbued with the
old spirit of the Marathon fighters. Dicaiopolis makes a speech in his defense
with his head on the executioner's block
using devices which he had
and while
Euripides;9
borrowed from he thus
in splitting his persecutors into two
succeeds
parties and therewith in stopping the persecution; as a consequence he enjoys
the pleasures of peace, the pleasures of farm life, while everyone else remains
at war.It is only another way of expressing the same thought, if one says with
Aristophanes that it was not, as Aeschylus and Euripides agree in the Frogs,
the ancient Aeschylus, the political tragic poet par excellence, but the modem
Euripides who gave her due to Aphrodite, for, as Socrates says in Plato's Ban
quet, Aphrodite is a goddess to whom together with Dionysus the Aristopha
nean comedy wholly is devoted. Incidentally, this agreement between
Aristophanes and Euripides and this disagreement between Aristophanes and
Aeschylus confirms our previous contention that Aristophanes was aware of the
essentially novel or revolutionary character of his whole enterprise. The action

of at least some of his comedies expresses this characteristic of Aristophanes 's
Peace,20
thought. In the Knights, the Wasps, the the Birds, Thesmophoriazusae,
and the Assembly of Women, the restoration of soundness in politics is achieved
by21
ridiculous means by radically novel means, by means which are incom
patible with the end: the ancestral polity and its spirit. Aristophanes did, then,
not have any delusions about the politically problematic character of his politi-
cal message.But to return to the argument at hand, the phenomenon in the light
of which Aristophanes looks critically at the city as such is the family or the
household. His comedies may be said to be one
commentary on the sentence in
the Nicomachean Ethics which reads: "Man is
by nature a
pairing animal rather
than a political one, for thefamily is earlier and more
necessary than the city,
and the begetting and bearing of children is more common to all animals (sc.
herds)."
than living in
The two poles between which the Aristophanean comedy moves have hith
erto appeared to be contemporary public folly on the one hand, and on the other
the retired and easy life of the household as a life of enjoyment of the pleasures
of the body. The transition from the one pole to the other is effected in the
comedies by means which are ridiculous or wholly unprecedented or extreme.
In the Peace the hero, Trygaeus, who is the comic poet himself in a thin
disguise, succeeds in stopping the horrors of an insane, fratricidal war by as
cending to heaven on the back of a dung-beetle. He believes that Zeus is re

sponsible for the war and he wants to rebuke him for this unfriendly conduct.
Having arrived in heaven, he finds out from Hermes that Zeus is responsible,
not for the war itself, but for the continuation of the war: Zeus has put savage
War in charge, War has interred Peace in a deep pit, and Zeus has made it a
capital crime to disinter her. The hero bribes Hermes with threats and promises,
the chief promise being that Hermes will become the highest god, into assisting
him in disinterring Peace. Trygaeus, acting against the express command of the
highest god, succeeds in disinterring Peace and thus brings peace to all of
Hellas. He does nothing, of course, to perform his promise to Hermes. Hermes
is superseded completely by Peace, who alone is worshipped. By rebelling
against Zeus and the other gods, Trygaeus becomes the saviour. The just and
pleasant life of ease and quiet cannot be brought about except by dethroning the
gods. The same theme is treated from a somewhat different point of view in the
Wasps. In that comedy a zealous old juryman is prevented by his sensible son,
first through force and then through persuasion, from attending the sessions of
the law court and from acting there unjustly. The son wishes his father to stay
at home and thus not to hurt his fellow men, to feast and to enjoy the pleasures
of refined, modem society. The son succeeds partly. The father is prevailed
upon to stay away from the court and to go to a party. But he is not fit for
refined enjoyments: he merely gets drunk, becomes entangled with a flute girl
and enjoys himself in committing acts of assault and battery. His savage nature
can be directed into different channels but it cannot be subdued. The father is
not a typical juryman, the typical juryman being a poor fellow who depends for
his livelihood on the pay which the jurymen received in Athens. He is ex
tremely eager to attend the court because he loves to condemn people. He

traces his inhuman desire to an injunction of the Delphic Oracle. When his son
deceives him into acquitting a defendant, he is afraid of having committed a sin
against the gods. What makes him savage is then his fear of the savagery of the
148 Interpretation
gods. It is surprising that the gods should be more punitive than men, for, as
Trygaeus finds out when he had ascended to heaven, men appear to be less evil
than they are when they are viewed from above, from the seat of the gods. The
underlying notion of the savagery of the gods is nowhere contradicted in the
Wasps. To make men somewhat more humane one must free them from the
gods. As Plato's Aristophanes puts it in the Banquet, Eros is the most philan
thropic god. The other gods are not characterized by love of men. In the
Thesmophoriazusae the poet shows how Euripides is persecuted by the Athe
nian women because he had maligned women so much. There is no question as
to the truth of what Euripides had said about the female sex; Aristophanes
expresses the same view throughout his plays. But the women are a force to be
reckoned with. To save himself, Euripides, who is said to be an atheist, com
mits an enormous act of sacrilege. It is not followed by any punishment. The
only concession which he is compelled to make is that he must promise the
women that he will no longer say nasty things about them. In contradistinction
to the Clouds, the Thesmophoriazusae has a happy ending; a poet succeeds
where the philosopher fails.

In the Birds we see two Athenians who have left their city because they are
sick of lawsuits which they do not wish to pay, and are in search for a quiet,
soft and happy city where a man does not have to be a busybody. Having
arrived at the place where they expect to get the necessary information, one of
the Athenians hits upon the thought of founding city comprising a a all birds
democratic world state. That city, he explains to the birds, will make the birds
the rulers of all men and all gods, for all traffic between men and gods (the
sacrifices) has to pass through the region in which the birds dwell. The pro
posal is adopted; the gods are starved into submission; the birds become the
new gods; they take the place of the gods. The ruler of the birds is our clever
Athenian. But he must make concessions to the universal democracy of the
birds. The birds praise themselves as the tme gods: they are the oldest and
wisest of all beings; they are all-seeing, all-ruling and altogether friendly to
Their life is is "base
convention"
men. altogether pleasant; what by among men

is noble among the birds: desertion, abolition of slavery, and last but not least
the beating of one's father. However, when a man who is given to beating his
father wishes to join the city of the birds in order to be able to indulge his
inclination with impunity for the laws of the birds are said to permit the
beating of one's father he is told by the Athenian founder of the city of the
birds that according to those laws the sons may not only not beat their fathers
but must feed them when they are old. This is to say, it is possible to establish
a universal democracy and hence universal happiness by dethroning the gods,
provided one preserves the prohibition against
beating one's father, provided
one preserves the family. Eros, which inspires the generating of men, requires
in the case of men the sacredness of the family. The family rather than the
city
is natural. While the city the birds is in the

of process of being founded, the
Athenian founder is visited by five men: by a poet who receives
a22
gift, by a
soothsayer, a supervisor and a seller of decrees or laws who are thrown out and
spanked, and in the central place by the Athenian astronomer Meton, who
air"
wishes to "measure the The founder admires Meton as another Thales and
loves him; but he warns him of the fact that the beat him, and he is
citizens will
in fact beaten up by the citizens of course, the birds. The founder's admira
tion and love cannot protect the astronomer against the popular dislike. Even in
the perfectlyhappy city, in the city which seems to be in every respect the city
according to nature, one cannot be openly a student of nature.
Both obscenities and blasphemies consist in publicly saying things which
cannot be said publicly ridiculous and hence pleasing
with propriety. They are
to the extent to whichpropriety is sensed as a burden, as something imposed,

as something owing its dignity to imposition, to convention, to nomos. In the
background of the Aristophanean comedy we discern the distinction between

nomos and physis. Hitherto we have recognized the locus of nature in the fam
ily. But Aristophanes takes a further step. That step is indicated by the frequent
non-indignant references to adultery as well as by facts like these: the hero of
the Birds is a pederast, and the sensible son who corrects his foolish father to
some extent in the Wasps uses force against his aged father. In brief, Aris
tophanes does not stop at the sacredness or naturalness of the family. One is
tempted to say that his comedies celebrate the victory of nature, as it reveals
itself in the pleasant, over convention or law, which is the locus

of the noble
and the just. Lest this be grossly misunderstood, one must add immediately two
points. In the first place, if nomos is viewed in the light of nature, the Aris
tophanean comedy is based on knowledge of nature and therefore on conscious

ness of the sublime pleasures accompanying knowledge of nature. Above all,
Aristophanes has no doubt as to thefact that nature, human nature, is in need
of nomos. Aristophanes does not reject nomos but he attempts to bring to light
its problematic and precarious status, its status in between the needs of the
body and the needs of the mind, for if one does not understand the precarious
status of nomos, one is bound to have unreasonable expectations from nomos.
The profoundest student of Aristophanes in modem times was Hegel. His
interpretation of the Aristophanean comedy occurs in the section of the Phe

"Religion"
nomenology of the Mind which is entitled in the subsection entitled

Art-Religion"
"The (the religion expressing itself completely by art). By the
Art-Religion Hegel means the Greek religion, which he regarded as the highest
religion outside of revealed religion. The Art-Religion finds its end and cul
mination, or it achieves full self-consciousness, in the Aristophanean comedy.
In that comedy, Hegel says, "The individual consciousness having become cer
power."
tain of itself presents itself as the absolute Everything objective the
gods, the city, the family, justice have become dissolved into the self-con-
150 Interpretation
sciousness or taken back into it. The comedy presents and celebrates the com
plete insubstantiality of everything alien to the self-consciousness, the complete
freedom from fear of everything transcending the individual. The comedy cele
brates the triumph "the subjectivity in its infinite Man has made
security."
of
himself the complete master ofeverything which he formerly regarded as the

substantial content of his knowledge or action. This victory of subjectivity is
one of the most important symptoms of the corruption of Greece. For our pres
ent purpose it is not necessary to dwell on the fact that in his lectures on
aesthetics Hegel does not consistently maintain this view. But we must note
that what Hegel calls the triumph of subjectivity is achieved in the Aristopha
nean comedy only by virtue of the knowledge of nature, i.e., the opposite of
self-consciousness. Let us then turn to Plato's interpretation of the Aristopha
nean comedy which we find in the speech he puts into the mouth of Aris
tophanes at the banquet. Only a few points can be mentioned here.
Aristophanes was supposed to make his speech in honor of Eros after
Pausanias had made a pause. But Aristophanes got a hiccough he did not
possess perfect control of his body, or perfect self-control and the physician
Eryximachus had to take his place. Aristophanes proves to be interchangeable

with a physician who was a student of nature in general. Aristophanes begins
with the remark that men do not seem to have experienced the power of Eros,
for if they had, they would build for him the greatest of temples and altars and
bring him the greatest sacrifices, since Eros is the most philanthropic of all
gods. He then tells the following story. In the olden times human nature was
different from what it is now. Each human being consisted of two human be
four23
ings; it had four hands, ears, etc. In this state men were of exceeding
strength and pride so that they undertook to ascend to heaven in order to attack
the gods. The gods did not know what to do, for they could not kill man, since
by doing so they would deprive themselves of honors and sacrifices. Zeus dis
covered this way out: to weaken men by cutting them into two so that they
became as they are now. After this incision, each half is longing for the other.
is24
This longing for the original unity, for a wholeness, eros. The original
whole was either androgynous or male or female. Those present human beings
who stem from original androgynes seek the opposite sex; an outstanding part
of them are the adulterers. Those present human beings who stem from an
original female are female homosexuals. Those present human beings who stem
from an original male are male homosexuals; they are the best among the boys
and youths because they are the most manly; they are bom to become tme
statesmen. This is the story to which the Platonic Aristophanes appends an
explanation of perfect propriety. But taken by itself the myth teaches that by
virtue of eros man, and especially the best part of the male sex, will approach a
become25
condition in which they a serious danger to the gods. We record here
the fact that the hero of the Birds, who succeeds in dethroning the gods and in
The Origins of Political Science -151
becoming the ruler of the universe through the birds, is the pederast
Peisthetaerus.26
(OCTOBER 31, 1958)
. [we must] go back to the origins of rationalism, and therefore to Socra

. .
tes. The oldest document regarding Socrates is Aristophanes 's comedy, the
Clouds. For an adequate understanding of the Clouds it is necessary to consider
the Aristophanean comedy in general, or to understand the spirit of his comedy.
I repeat a few points I made last time. Aristophanean comedy has a two-fold
function, the function to make us laugh and to teach us justice. The function is
to be ridiculous, and to be serious. Yet at the same time the Aristophanean
comedy is the total comedy; the comical is all pervasive. Hence not only injus
tice, or contemporary public folly, but justice itself is
way presented in such a
as to afford opportunity to laugh. How does Aristophanes achieve this feat?

The just life, as he sees it, is the retired life, life on the farm, enjoying the
pleasures of farm life, enjoyment of the pleasures of thebody, especially of
love. These pleasures are given in the comedy a frank, unrestrained expression.
The characters use the language of what, as I have learned through my frequent
readings in the American Journal of Sociology, is called in this country the
language of the stag party. The movement from the ridiculous of public folly to
the praise of public soundness is therefore a movement from the ridiculous of
public folly to the ridiculous of impropriety, not to say obscenity. If one an

alyzes this state of things one recognizes as the basis of Aristophanes 's thought
a polarity, the polarity of the polis, the city, and the family, and in this context
the family appears to be more natural than the The comedy may be said
polis.
to be one whole appeal from the polis to the more natural family. In other
words, Aristophanes presupposes the fundamental distinction between nature

and law or convention. On the basis of this fundamental distinction he ques
tions the family itself, not only the city. For instance, the beating of one's
father, the crime from the point of view of the family, is presented as not
absolutely wrong in one of the comedies, in the Wasps. Hence the more proper
description of the fundamental polarity would be this: the conflict between the
pleasant on the one hand and the just and noble on the other. Now this life of
gaiety, peace, and enjoyment, the natural life, requires, according to Aris-
tophanes's presentation, the successful revolt against the gods, for the gods are
punitive and harsh. This clearly in the Birds and in the Peace.
comes out most
Aristophanes.27
Here is a place for the famous blasphemies in
I concluded my general interpretation of the Aristophanean comedy by con
trasting it with the interpretation given by the greatest mind who has devoted
himself in modem times to Aristophanes, and that is Hegel. Hegel sees in the
152 Interpretation
Aristophanean comedy the triumph of subjectivity over everything objective
and substantial, over the city, the family, morality, and the gods. The subject,
the autonomous subject, recognizes itself as the origin of everything objective,
and takes the objective back into itself. This does justiceto almost everything
in Aristophanes except to one thing of indeed decisive importance. The basis of
this taking back, or however we call it, of this subjectivism, is in Aristophanes
not the self-consciousness of the subject, but knowledge of nature, and the very
opposite of self-consciousness. Aristophanes has brought this out most clearly
in a scene in the Birds in which the founder of a natural city is confronted by an
astronomer, a student of nature, and the founder of this city according to nature
admires and loves that student of nature, but he cannot protect him against the
enmity of the citizen body, or the populace. In this case the populace consists
of birds, but the application to human beings does not require a very great
effort of the intelligence or the imagination. The basis of Aristophanean com
edy is knowledge of nature, and that means for the ancients philosophy. But
philosophy is a problem, philosophy does not have a political or civic exis
tence. Here is where the problem of the Clouds comes in, to which I turn now.
I repeat a few things which I said at the end of the last meeting. At the
beginning of the Clouds it is dark. Strepsiades, the hero of the comedy, the
man who causes Socrates's downfall, is lying on his couch and cannot find
sleep. He longs for the day, for light in the literal sense. We may take this as a
clue to the comedy. Socrates owes his downfall to a man who seeks light in the
most literal sense, to a kind of Sancho Panza, to a rustic who has lost his
bearings or has gone astray. It will do no great harm if this comparison sug
gests a similarity between Aristophanes 's Socrates and Don Quixote. Strep
siades is not an embodiment of stem, old-fashioned justice, he is rather a
crook. He is a simple rustic, a man of the common people who has married a
patrician lady. The offspring of the marriage, their son Pheidippides, has inher
ited the expensive tastes of his mother's line. He is a passionate horseman. He
has run his father into exorbitant debt. In order to get rid of his debts, Strep
siades had decided to send his spendthrift son to Socrates, the owner and man
ager of a thinktank, so that he might learn how to talk himself out of his debts
at lawcourts. Strepsiades knows this much of Socrates, that Socrates talks about
theheavens, and besides, teaches people for money how they can win every
lawsuit, by fair means or foul. But although he lives next door, Strepsiades
does not know Socrates's name, whereas his sophisticated son knows it as a
matter of course.His son refuses to become Socrates's pupil. The elegant
young horseman has nothing but contempt for Socrates and his companions,
"those pale-faced and ill-dressed boasters and beggars", hence Strepsiades him
self is compelled to become Socrates's pupil. Let us reflect for a moment about
this situation, as it beginning

comes to sight right at the Clouds. The of the
common people know nothing of Socrates, not even his name. The patricians
do know of Socrates, but they despise him as a ridiculous sort of beggar.
Socrates does not run any danger from the two most powerful sections of soci
ety. If Strepsiades had remained within his station, Socrates would never have
gotten into trouble. Socrates does get into trouble through a certain inbetween
type of man, who is not distinguished by honesty. Here we remind ourselves of
the fact that the old juryman of the Wasps, who is such a savage condemner
because he believes that the look

askance at acquittals, is also socially an
gods
inbetween type. Needless to say that the demagogues too belong to the inbe
tween type. Strepsiades then sends his son to Socrates so that he might leam
dishonest practices for him. Strepsiades is ultimately responsible for a possible
corruption of his son, and yet this will not prevent him from
making Socrates
alone responsible.
A word about Socrates's thinktank or school. Misled by what the Platonic

Socrates in his apology addressed to the Athenian people about his spend
says
ing all his time in the market place, some people think that the school house of
Socrates is a pure or impure invention of Aristophanes. Yet there is Xenophon
tic evidence to the effect that Socrates used to sit together with his friends and
to study with them the books of the wise men of old, and that he never ceased
considering with them what each of the beings is. Given the fact that Socrates
was the leader in these gatherings, and that the activities mentioned cannot well
in28
be engaged in the market-place, Xenophon tells us then in effect that Socra
tes was a teacher, if a perfect teacher. And a teacher has pupils, and the com
munity of teachers and pupils, rather than the building, is a school.
Strepsiades enters then Socrates's thinktank in order to become his pupil. He
is received by a pupil of Socrates. It takes considerable time before he meets
Socrates. Socrates is not as easy of access as Euripides in a comparable scene
in the Acharnians. The pupil tells Strepsiades that what is going on in the
Strepsiades'
thinktank may not be divulged to anyone except to pupils. But s
mere declaration that he intends to become a pupil induces the pupil to blurt out
all the secrets he knows. Socrates's security arrangements are most inept. We
leam through the pupil that Socrates and his pupils study mathematics and
natural science. For example, they investigate how many feet of its own a flea
can jump. They need not leave the tank in order to catch the flea. Then Strep
siades becomes aware of Socrates aloft, suspended in a basket, walking on air,
and looking over the sun, or looking down on it. At Strepsiades's request,
Socrates descends and leams of Strepsiades's desire to leam to talk himself out
of his debts. Socrates initiates him immediately without having given a mo
ment's thought to the question of pay. In fact, nowhere in the play, after Strep
siades has knocked at Socrates's door, do we find any reference to Socrates
is there to
taking any pay for his
casual reference
teaching. Only once a very
some sort of gift which Strepsiades offers to Socrates out of gratitude. Socrates
is not a sophist in Aristophanes. Socrates is no money maker, but a needy

fellow, who makes his companions too needy and yet is insensitive to his and
neediness. Socrates's first words addressed to Strepsiades had
his
154 Interpretation
been, "Why do himself

one?"
you call me, you ephemeral Socrates shows
throughout as the despiser of everything ephemeral, and hence in particular of
money. He is induced to converse with Strepsiades not by greed or vanity, but

is the desire to reduce the
prompted29
rather by a desire to talk, which either by

volume of stupidity in the world, or else by sheer enthusiasm for his pursuit.
Socrates teaches two things, natural science and rhetoric. The duality of
natural science and rhetoric corresponds to a duality of principles. The first

principle is aether, which is the original whirl or chaos, the highest cosmic
principle, and the other principle is the clouds, which give understanding and
power of speech, and inspire the choruses. The clouds correspond to rhetoric,
since they can take any shape they like, or since they can imitate everything, or
since they can reveal the nature of all things, and since at the same time they
conceal the sky, they conceal the aether, or heaven, or the highest reality, for
rhetoric is essentially both revealing and concealing. The clouds are the only
gods recognized and worshipped by Socrates. They are worshipped by him as
gods because they are the origin of the greatest benefit to men, whereas the
highest cosmic principle, aether, is responsible for both good and evil. The
clouds love lazy or inactive people and demand abstinence from bodily exer
cises. Socrates does not hesitate to make clear what he means by

worshipping
exist."
only the clouds. I quote, "Zeus does not He demands from Strepsiades
that he no longer recognize the gods worshipped by the city, and Strepsiades,
mind you, complies with this request without any hesitation. The strange thing
is that Socrates blurts shocking things before he has tested Strepsiades
out these
regarding his worthiness to hear of them and his ability to understand them.
The Aristophanean Socrates is characterized by an amazing lack of phronesis,
of practical wisdom or prudence. Still, since Strepsiades has no interest beyond
cheating his creditors, Socrates limits himself to teaching him speech, gram
mar, et cetera. He does not even attempt to teach him natural science. But
Strepsiades proves to be too stupid even for the lower or easier branch of
knowledge. He is therefore compelled to force his son to become Socrates's

pupil.He is particularly anxious that Socrates should teach Pheidippides the
Unjust Speech, the Unjust Argument Just and Unjust Argument are personi
fied in the Clouds Socrates merely replies that Pheidippides will hear both
speeches, the Just Speech and the Unjust Speech. Socrates himself will be
absent while the two speeches have their exchange. Socrates does not teach
injustice, he merely exposes his pupils to the arguments between justice and
injustice. He cannot be held responsible for the fact that justice cannot hold her
own by argument against injustice.
The Unjust Speech denies the existence of right on the grounds that justice is
for
gods."
not "with the Zeus did not perish having done violence to this father,
but rather was rewarded for it. The Just Speech is unable to reply to this point.
The Just Speech points out

that30
the Unjust Speech does harm to the city, while
the city feeds the Unjust Speech. It praises old-fashioned temperance. The Un-
just Speech replies in the spirit of the Aristophanean comedy. It refers to the
necessities of nature, which are stronger than the demands of temperance. It
encourages people to make use of nature, that is to say, to regard nothing as
base, for one cannot help being defeated by eros and by women. The proof is
again supplied by the conduct of Zeus. In a word, the ancestral morality, the
standard of the external Aristophanes, is contradicted by the ancestral theology
on which it is based. At the end of the exchange the Just Speech admits its
defeat, and deserts to the camp of the Unjust Speech.

Pheidippides leams the art of speaking. Trusting in his son's accomplish
ments, Strepsiades refuses to payhis debts, and, in addition, insults his credi
tors. He heaps ridicule on his former oaths regarding his debts and on the very
gods. Then a controversy arises between father and son. The son despises Aes
chylus and the father admires him. The son prefers Euripides, who, he says, is
the wisest poet, and he quotes from Euripides a description of incest between
brother and sister. Strepsiades is deeply shocked. The son goes so far as to beat
his father, but he proves his father's satisfaction, through the Just Speech,
to
that he acts justly in beating his father. But then, when Pheidippides declares
that he can also prove by the Unjust Speech that he is entitled to beat his
mother, Strepsiades's patience snaps. Cursing himself and his dishonesty, he

repents, rums passionately against Socrates his school, recognizes the exis
and
tence of Zeus and the other gods, and bums down Socrates's thinktank. He
justifies this action as the punishment for the impiety of Socrates. But let us not
forget that it was not Socrates's impiety or lessons, but Socrates's alleged
teaching that a may beat his own mother, which aroused Strepsiades's
son
unquenchable ire, and brought about Socrates's downfall. If we wish to under

stand Aristophanes 's case against Socrates, we must overcome our natural re
this31
vulsion to kind of subject, and raise the question as to the particular
significance of the permission to beat one's mother as distinguished from beat
ing one's father. An indication is given by the fact that Strepsiades was already
Euripides'
about to rebel when he heard of s presentation of incest between

brother and sister. We shall express the underlying thought as follows. Granted
that the family is more natural than the city, yet the family cannot be secure
and flourish except by becoming a part of the city. The prohibition against
incest compels the family to transcend itself, and, as it were, to expand into the
city. The prohibition against incest is a quasi-natural bridge between the family
and the city. By rebelling against the alleged outrageous teaching of Socrates,
Strepsiades merely acts in the spirit of his love for his son, which has inspired
his escapades into dishonesty. Given the delicate and complicated character of
the relation between and city, and ultimately between nature and con
family
poles can only be bridged if convention is
vention, the gulf between the two
reference to the gods. For the reason I indicated, the gods can
consecrated
by
fulfill their function without harshness. Yet since the gods are not human
not
they32
beings and therefore cannot be bound by the laws to which subject

156 Interpretation
men Hera is both Zeus's wife and sister a great difficulty remains. Men
must do what the gods tell them to do, but
not33
what the gods do. This is not

altogether satisfactory for those who long with all their heart to imitate the
gods.
It is necessary to consider the conduct of Socrates's goddesses, the Clouds.

The Clouds do not express Socrates's sentiment regarding the non-existence of
the other gods very far from it. They present themselves as being on the
friendliest terms with the other gods. But they listen silently to Socrates's de
nial of the existence of the other gods. They are highly pleased with Socrates's
worshipping the Clouds. They congratulate Strepsiades on his desire for great
wisdom and promise him perfect happiness, provided he has a good memory,
indefatigable dedication to study, and extreme continence. And last but not
least, if he honors the Clouds. They promise him in particular that he will
surpass all Greeks in the art of public speaking, and certainly in that kind of
public speaking which he needs in order to get rid of his debts. They hand him
over to Socrates. When Strepsiades proves to be too dumb, they advise him to
send his son to Socrates in his stead. While Strepsiades fetches Pheidippides
they remind Socrates of their great generosity toward Socrates and advise him
to take the fullest advantage of Strepsiades's willingness to do everything Soc
rates says. A change makes itself felt during the exchange between the Just
Speech and the Unjust Speech. When the Just Speech praises the ancient sys
tem of education, the Marathonian system, they applaud. They never applaud
the Unjust Speech. When Strepsiades scoffs at his creditors and insults them in
every way, the Clouds express the direst warnings regarding Strepsiades's fu
ture fate, and especially as to what he may have to expect from his sophisti
cated son. After Strepsiades has come to his senses, and repented, the Clouds
tell him that he got only what was coming to him because he had turned to
dishonesty. Strepsiades replies, with some justice, that the Clouds had encour
aged him. But the goddesses reply that it is their constant practice to guide men
intent on evils into misfortune, so that they may leam to fear the gods. Need
less to say, the Clouds do not raise a finger, if Clouds can raise a finger, in
Clouds'
defense of Socrates and his thinktank. I suggest this explanation. The
only worshipper in Athens up to now is Socrates. Hence they favor him for the
time being. They claim that they help the city more than all other gods, al
though they are the only gods which are not worshipped in Athens. There is
Either34
this alternative before them. Socrates, whom they favor
as35
their sole
worshipper, becomes a success the Clouds will be worshipped by the whole
city or Socrates fails they will be instrumental, if only by permission, in his

Clouds36
destruction. The will be worshipped again by the whole city. If I may
use avery vulgar expression, they are sitting pretty.
After Socrates has introduced the new divinities into the city they desert him
when they see how unpopular he is bound to become. They change their posi
tion as soon as they see how the Strepsiades case, the test case, is developing.
Their conduct proves their divinity. They are wiser than Socrates. The Clouds
are wise because they act with prudent regard to both Socrates's virtue and his
vice. His virtue consists in his daring, his intrepidity, his non-conformity,
which enables him not to worship the divinities worshipped by the city, and to
worship new divinities worshipped by no one but himself. His vice is his lack
of practical wisdom, or prudence. For it would be wrong to say of Aris-
tophanes's Socrates that he is unjust. He is indifferent to justice. The fact that
he does not rebuke Strepsiades for his dishonesty may very well mean that once
you enter the life of business and action you have already made a decision to
use dishonest means. Besides, it is by no means clear whether the creditors
who sold Pheidippides the expensive horses and expensive chariots did not
cheat him in the first place. And it is not Socrates's fault if the common view
of justice, based as it is on mythology, is intellectually inferior to the open plea
for injustice. If all men dedicated themselves to the pursuit to which the Aris
tophanean Socrates is dedicated, the study of nature, no one would have the
incentive for to be the be
seems37
slightest hurting anyone else. Yet, and this
ginning to Socrates's error, not all men are capable to lead a life of contempla
tion. As a consequence of this grave oversight the Aristophanean Socrates is
his indifference to
effect38
wholly unaware of the devastating which practical
matters must have on the city, if non-

theoretical men should become influenced
by Socrates's sentiments. Socrates is unaware of the setting within which his
thinktank exists. He lacks self-knowledge. His lack of prudence proceeds from
his lack of self-knowledge. It is because of his lack of self-knowledge that he is
so radically unpolitical. If one remembers the fact that the Aristophanean come
dies are dedicated to the praises of Aphrodite and Dionysus, or to the praise of
eros, one observes immediately, with great surprise, Socrates's complete im
munity to wine and to love. The Aristophanean Socrates is altogether unerotic.
It is for this reason that he is thoroughly amusic. However closely he may be

linked with Euripides, there is a gulf between him and Euripides precisely
because Socrates has nothing in common with the poetic Muse. As a necessary
consequence of this, when Euripides is persecuted in the Thesmophoriazusae,
he is capable to save himself, whereas when Socrates is persecuted in the

Clouds, he has no means of defense. Socrates's pursuit, the precise study of
nature and of rhetoric, is not a public power, whereas poetry is a public power.
Aristophanes 's comical presentation of Socrates is the most important statement
of the case for poetry in that secular contest between poetry and philosophy of
which Plato speaks at the beginning of the tenth book of the Republic.
Plato's Republic may be said to be the reply par excellence to Aristophanes.
The political proposals of the Republic are based on the conceits underlying
Assembly of Women. The

complete39
Aristophanes 's communism, communism
not only regarding property, but regarding women and children as well, is
introduced in Plato's Republic with arguments literally taken from Aris
be-
tophanes 's Assembly of Women. There is this most important difference
158 Interpretation
tween the best city of the Assembly of Women and that of the Republic. Plato
its40
contends that complete communism requires as capstone or its foundation
the rule of philosophy, about which Aristophanes is completely silent. This
difference corresponds to a difference indicated in Plato's Banquet. According
to Aristophanes the direction of eros is horizontal. According to Plato the direc
tion of eros is vertical. While the Republic makes important use of the Assem
bly of Women, it is at least equally much directed against, and indebted to, the
Clouds. Thrasymachus represents the Unjust Speech, and Socrates takes the
place of the Just Speech. And the Just Speech is in Plato, of course, victorious.
The chief interlocutors in the Republicare the erotic Glaucon and the musical
Adeimantus. As for music, Socrates demands in the name of justice that the
poet as free poet be expelled from the city. As for eros, the tyrant, injustice
incarnate, is revealed to be eros incarnate. The Socrates of the Republic reveals
his kinship with the unerotic and the amusic Socrates of the Clouds.
What, then, do we leam from Aristophanes regarding the origin of political

science? Aristophanes presents Socrates in about the same light in which Aris
totle Hippodamus from Miletus, as a student of nature as a whole who

presents
fails to understand the political things. The concern of philosophy leads beyond
the city in spite, or because, of the fact that philosophy is concerned with
rhetoric. Philosophy is unable to persuade the non-philosophers, or the com

mon people, and hence philosophy is not a political power. Philosophy, in
contradistinction to poetry, cannot charm the multitude. Because philosophy
transcends the human and ephemeral, it is radically unpolitical, and therefore it
is amusic and unerotic. It cannot teach the just things, whereas poetry can.
Philosophy is then in need of being supplemented by a pursuit which is political

because it is music and erotic, if philosophy is to become just. Philosophy lacks
self-knowledge. Poetry is self-knowledge. Plato did not deny that there is a
problem here. In the Laws his Athenian Stranger gives occasion to a political
hold human
cheap."
man to say to him, "Stranger, you very our To which race
the Stranger, the philosopher, replies, "Marvel not, but forgive me; for having
looked away toward the god and having made the experience going with this, I
said what I just said. But if you prefer, be it granted that our race is not
despicable but worthy of

seriousness."
some The recognition by philosophy of
the fact that the human race is worthy of some seriousness is the origin of
political philosophy or political science. If this recognition is to be philosophic,

however, this must mean that the political things, the merely human
things, are
ofdecisive importance for understanding nature as a whole. The philosopher
who was the first to realize this was Socrates, the Socrates who emerged out of
the Socrates of the Clouds. Of this Socrates we know through Xenophon and
Plato. I shall speak first of the Xenophontic Socrates.

At first glance Xenophon's Socratic writings appear to be the most reliable
source for establishing the character of the Socratic teaching.
Among the four
authors of the chief sources regarding Socrates, Xenophon alone combined the
two most important qualifications. He was an acquaintance of Socrates, and he

has shown by deed that he was able and willing to be a historian. In spite of
this, Xenophon's testimony does not enjoy in our time the respect it so patently
deserves. The reason for this anomaly can be stated as follows. Xenophon is
not very intelligent, not to say that he is a fool. He has the mind of a retired
colonel rather than of a philosopher. He was by dogs,

much more attracted
horses, battles, and recollections of battles, than by the truth. John Bumet, one
of the most outstanding scholars in this field, has stated this view in the most
extreme form and therefore in a particularly enlightening form. Bumet con
tended that Xenophon did not know Socrates well, seeing that Xenophon him
self practically says that he was a youth in 401, that is to say, when he had
already left Athens for good and was with Cyrus in Asia Minor. Bumet sug
gests that Xenophon was attracted by Socrates, not on account of Socrates's
wisdom or intelligence, but Socrates's military reputation. The
on account of
most obvious difficulty for this theory is the fact that we owe all our specific
information about Socrates's military exploits to Plato, and even in the case of
Plato the most detailed report is given by an intoxicated man. Xenophon barely
alludes to these things. In his two lists of Socrates's virtues he does not even
mention Socrates's military virtue, his courage, or manliness. He leaves it at an

occasional reference to Socrates's having shown his justice, both in civil life
and in campaigns. Besides, the term youth or young man, which is applied to
Xenophon by an emissary of the Persian king, means in the context, "you
man."
clever
young The term is used in order to counteract a remark which
Xenophon had made. It cannot be used for fixing Xenophon's date of birth.
The prejudice against Xenophon is based, not on a sober study of his writings,
but on the fact that the prevailing notions of the greatness of a man and the
greatness of an author do not leave room for the recognition of the specific
greatness of the man and the author Xenophon. Romanticism, in all its forms,
has renderedimpossible the tme understanding of Xenophon. As for Bumet in
particular, his dissatisfaction with Xenophon had a special reason. He was un
commonly sensitive to the presence in Socrates's thought of natural science,

and Xenophon flatly denies that Socrates had anything to do with natural sci
ence. While the modem criticism of Xenophon is of no value, its sheer power
may incline us to reconsider our first impression. Despite the fact that Xeno
phon was a historian, this was an exaggeration. Xenophon wrote one historical
work, the Hellenica, but his most extensive book, the Education of Cyrus,
which presents itself as ahistorical book, is rightly regarded, and has always
been regarded, as a work of fiction. Xenophon's achievement as a historian
was only a part of his literary activity. In order to describe his literary activity
as a whole it is wise to make use of a description which is sometimes found in
the manuscripts of his writings. There he is sometimes called the Orator Xeno
phon. As for the closerelationship between oratory and history in antiquity, it

suffices to refer to Cicero's rhetorical writings. The expression, the Orator Xe-
160 Interpretation
nophon, means less that Xenophon was a public speaker but that he was a man
who fully possessed the art of public speaking, or that one can leam that art by
studying his writings. The expression means here less the art of Pericles or
Demosthenes than the art of Isocrates. Anticipating the result of this lecture, I
that41
shall say Xenophon's rhetoric was Socratic rhetoric.
The art of publicspeaking in Xenophon's writing is

exhibited an art of
writing. Tradition tells us that Xenophon was a bashful man, a man strong of
sense of shame. This description certainly fits the writer Xenophon, or Xeno
phon's art of writing. A man who possesses a strong sense of shame will re
frain as much as possible from hearing, seeing, and speaking of the ugly, the
evil, and the bad. To quote his own words, "It is noble and just and pious and
ones."
more pleasant to remember the good things rather than the bad For
instance, Xenophon would prefer to say of a given town that it was big, rather
than that it was big, deserted, and poor. But of a town in a good condition he
would without any hesitation say that it was big, inhabited, and well-off. He
would say of a given individual that he was brave and shrewd rather than that
he was a brave and shrewd crook. He expects the reader of his praises to think
as much of the virtues which he mentions as of those virtues about which he is
silent because of their absence. Lest we be by
shocked the fact that an abomi
nable traitor was highly rewarded by the king who was benefited by the act of
treason, Xenophon would suggest that that king had the traitor tortured to death
throughout a whole year for his treason. But since Xenophon desires not only
not to shock our feelings, but also to indicate the truth, he will add the remark
that he cannot be certain that such a fitting retribution for the act of treason
actually took place. He says this act is said to have taken place. Going a step
further in the same direction, Xenophon would say of a man that his father is
said to be X, but as for his mother there is agreement that she was Y. One of
the why he entitled his so-called Expedition of Cyrus, Anabasis,
reasons
Cyrus's Ascent, is that the only part of the story which was happy as far as
Cyrus was concerned was the ascent, the way up from the coast to the interior,
as distinguished from the battle which took place after the completion of the
ascent and which unhappy for Cyrus. These examples must here
was most
suffice for showing that Xenophon's maxim regarding the

preferability of re
membering the good things rather than the bad ones circumscribes what is now
generally known as irony. The ironical is a kind of the ridiculous.
In one of Xenophon's Socratic writings Socrates describes the general opin
ion about himself in terms reminding of the Clouds. In some way Aristophanes
is present in Xenophon's work. One of the most striking differences between42
Xenophon's Socrates and Aristophanes 's Socrates is that the former is urbane
and patient, whereas the Aristophanean Socrates shows a complete lack of ur
banity and even politeness, and also of patience. The only man whom Xeno
phon's Socrates ever addresses most impolitely is Xenophon himself. This
occurs in the only conversation between Xenophon and Socrates which is re-
The Origins of Political Science '161
corded in Xenophon's Socratic writings. Xenophon's Socrates calls Xenophon,

"You That is to say, Xenophon's Socrates treats Xeno
wretch!"
fool!", "You
phon, and only Xenophon, in the same way in which Aristophanes 's Socrates
treats Strepsiades. In the Clouds Pheidippides says in a dream to a friend,
"Take the horse home
roll."
when you have given him a good In Xenophon's

Oeconomicus the interlocutor of Socrates says, "My slave takes the horse home
he has
roll."
when given him a good The same meter. Could the interlocutor of
Socrates in the Oeconomicus, the perfect gentleman Ischomachus, be Xeno

phon's substitute for Aristophanes 's Pheidippides? Pheidippides comes to sight
in the Clouds as Socrates's pupil in injustice. Ischomachus, however, is Socra

takes43
tes's teacher in justice, just as in Xenophon's work Xenophon the place
which in the Clouds was throughout occupied by Strepsiades. Through the use
of ridiculous things Socrates is shown by Xenophon to be in harmony with
respectability and with the city, and to contribute through his activities to civic
or political excellence of the highest order. Xenophon's Socratic writings, one
Aristophanes'
might dare to say, constitute a reply to s Clouds on the level of
the Clouds, and with a most subtle use of the means of Aristophanes. We could
use this observation as a clue to Xenophon's Socratic writings if we were not
wholly averse to paradoxes. Let us rather turn to the most obvious, to the
surface, and cling to it as much as we can.
Fifteen writings have come down to us as writings of Xenophon. Four of
them are the Socratic writings, then there is the Expedition of Cyrus, the Edu
cation of Cyrus, the Greek History, or rather Hellenica, and the Minor Writ
ings. The titles of some of these writings are strange. The title of the
Expedition of Cyrus, the Ascent of Cyrus, fits only the first part of the work.
The bulk of the work deals not with the ascent of Cyrus but with the descent of
Xenophon,
the44
descent originated and organized by Xenophon of the Greek
mercenaries who had followed Cyrus on his ascent. The title of the Education
of Cyrus fits only the first book of the work. The bulk of the work deals not
with Cyrus's education, but with the exploits of Cyrus after his education had
been completed. The title of the largest of the Socratic writings, Memorabilia
in the Latin translation, Recollections, is also somewhat strange. This strange
ness was recognized by some editors as well as translators, who called the book
Memorabilia Socratis, Recollections of Socrates, for the book is entirely de
voted to what Xenophon remembered of Socrates. By calling the book Recol
lections simply, Xenophon indicated that his recollections simply, or his

recollections par excellence, are not his recollections of his deeds in Asia
Minor, which are recorded in the Expedition of Cyrus, but his recollections of
Socrates. The name of Socrates occurs only in the title of one of his four
Socratic writings, in the title of Socrates, just as the name of

of the Apology
Socrates occurs only in the title of one of Plato's works, again, the Apology of
Socrates. The Socratic writings constitute, as it were, one pole of Xenophon's
work. The other pole is constituted by the Education of Cyrus. A reference by

162 Interpretation
Xenophon's Socrates to Cyrus shows that Cyrus is not absent from Xenophon's
Socratic writings. It could not be otherwise. Cyrus is presented by Xenophon as
the model of a mler, and especially of a captain. But Xenophon's Socrates

possesses perfect command of the art of the captain, as Xenophon shows. And
since according to a principle of both Xenophon's and Plato's Socrates the
necessary and sufficient condition for being a perfect captain is one's possess
ing perfect command of the art of the captain, Xenophon's Socrates too is a
perfect captain. On the other hand, Socrates is present in the three most exten
sive Xenophontic writings which are not devoted to Socrates, the Hellenica, the
Expedition of Cyrus, and the Education of Cyrus. In each of these writings
there occurs a single reference, explicit or allusive, to Socrates. The charac
teristic feature of Xenophon's work as a whole can be said to be the presence in

it of the two poles, Cyrus and Socrates.
There is a radical difference between Cyrus and Socrates in spite of the fact
that both are excellent captains, a difference which on reflection proves to be
an opposition. Xenophon indicates this difference most simply by failing to

mention courage, or military virtue, among the virtues of Socrates. Cyrus exer
cises, and Socrates does not exercise, the royal or political art, since Cyrus is
eager to exercise it and Socrates does not wish to exercise it. Since there is,
then, an opposition between Cyrus and Socrates, there is needed a link between
Cyrus and Socrates. This link is Xenophon himself. Xenophon can be a link
between Cyrus and Socrates because he is a pupil of Socrates and not of the
sophists. Xenophon was induced to accompany Cyrus, the namesake of the

great empire builder Cyrus, by his friend Proxenus, who had been a pupil of
Gorgias, the famous teacher of rhetoric. Proxenus left the school of Gorgias in
the belief that he was able to acquire a great name, great power, and great
wealth by just and noble means alone. But he had the defect that he could rale
only gentlemen, and was incapable to make himself feared by the soldiers, for
he believed that praise and withholding praise sufficed for the governance of
men. He did not appreciate the power of punishment, or of harshness. But

Xenophon, the pupil of Socrates, was able to rule both gentlemen and those
who were not gentlemen. He was as excellent at castigating the bad and base,
and beating them, as he praising the good and the noble. Hence he could
was at
have become the sole commander of the Greek army if he had desired it. Hence
he could seriously desire to become the founder of a city in Asia Minor. Xeno
phon shows by his deeds the radical difference between Socrates and the other
wise men of his age. Socrates was the political educator par excellence. Socra
tes was the opposite of a mere speculator about the things in heaven and be
neath the earth. Socrates, and not Gorgias, for example, was the political
educator par excellence because he had recognized the power of that in man
which is recalcitrant to reason and which therefore cannot be persuaded into
submission, but must be beaten into it. Socrates understands the nature of polit
ical things, which are not simply rational. Therefore, the student of politics can
leam something important by observing the training of dogs and of horses.

Therefore there exists a relation between Xenophon's Socratic writings and
those of his minor writings which deal with dogs and horses. It is perfectly
fitting, for more than one reason, that his writing on dogs, or rather on hunting
with dogs, almost ends with a blame of the sophists, and a praise of the philos
ophers.
I must now turn to a more detailed analysis of the political teaching of
Xenophon's Socrates, but we do have the time for that. Therefore, I make a
not
few remarks giving some conclusion to this lecture. There are four Socratic
writings, the Memorabilia, the Oeconomicus, the Banquet, and the Apology of
Socrates. Next time I try
will to show that the Memorabilia are meant to be a
presentation of Socrates's justice, that the three other Socratic writings present
Socrates simply, without a limited regard to his justice. The Oeconomicus pre
sents Socrates as a speaker, the Banquet presents Socrates as a doer, and the
Apology of Socrates presents Socrates as a silent deliberator, or thinker. The
literary principle of the Memorabilia, the largest of these four books, is to

indicate the character of Socrates's true activity, but not to set it forth. If one
considers these indications carefully, one comes to see that the Xenophontic
Socrates did not limit himself to the study of the human things, but was con
cerned, as every other philosopher, with the whole, only he thought that the
human things are the clue to the whole. For Xenophon's Socrates, as well as
for the Platonic Socrates, the key for the understanding of the whole is the fact
that the whole is characterized by what I shall call noetic heterogeneity. To
state it more simply, by the fact that the whole consists of classes or kinds the
character of which does not become fully clear through sense perception. It is
for this reason that Socrates could become the founder of political philosophy,
or political science. For political philosophy, or political science, is based on
the premise that political things are in a class by themselves, that there is an
essential difference between political things, and things which are not political.
Or more specifically, that there is an essential difference between the common
good and the private or sectional good. Socrates is the first philosopher who did
justice to the claim of the political, the claim which is in fact raised by the
polis, the political society. This means that he also realized the limitations of
that claim. Hence he distinguished between two ways of life, the political life,
and one which transcends the political life and which is the highest. Now while
according to Xenophon and his Socrates the transpolitical life is higher in dig
nity than the political life, they did everything in their power to instill respect
for the claims of the city and of political life and everything connected
of with
it. Moderation proves to be the characteristic quality of Socrates. Here as well
as in other respects, recognition of the essential difference between the political
and the non-political, or, more fundamentally, recognition of the existence of

essential differences, or of noetic heterogeneity, appears as moderation as op
posed to the madness of the philosophers preceding Socrates. But Socratic

164 Interpretation
moderation means also, and in a sense even primarily, the recognition of opin
ions which are not tme but salutary to political life. Socrates, Xenophon says,
did not separate from each other wisdom and moderation. The political is in
deed not the highest, but it is the first, because it is the most urgent. It is
related to philosophy as continence is related to virtue proper. It is the founda
tion, the indispensable condition. From here we can understand why Socrates
could be presented in a popular presentation as having limited himself, his
study, entirely to the human and political things. The human or political things
are indeed the clue to all things, to the whole of nature, since they are the link
or bond between the highest and the lowest, or since man is a microcosm, or
since the human or political things and their correlatives are the form in which
the highest principle . . [end of tape]
(NOVEMBER 3, 1958)
Plato's and Xenophon's presentation of Socrates can be understood, can be

as replies to Aristophanes 's presentation of Socrates. Aris-
understood,
tophanes's presentation is not a piece of buffoonery, but it goes to the root of
the matter, not in spite, but because of the fact that it is a comedy. The Clouds
read in conjunction with the other plays of Aristophanes, especially the Birds
and Thesmophoriazusae , are one of the greatest documents of the contest be
tween philosophy and poetry for supremacy. They are the greatest documents
of the case for the supremacy of poetry. The Aristophanean comedy is based on
the fundamental distinction between nature and convention. It is therefore
based on philosophy. Philosophy, or the science of nature, or physiology in the

Greek sense of the word, as represented by Socrates is allied with rhetoric. It
recognizes two principles corresponding to the difference of natural science on
the one hand and rhetoric on the other. These principles are Aether and the
Clouds. Now in spite of this alliance with rhetoric, philosophy, the investiga
tion of what is in heaven and beneath the earth, is radically unpolitical. It
simply transcends the political. It is oblivious of man, or rather of human life,
yet human life is its basis. Hence it does not understand itself. It lacks self-
knowledge, therefore it lacks practical wisdom. Because it is unconcerned with
human life it is unerotic and amusic. Philosophy must therefore be integrated

into a whole which is ruled by poetry. Poetry is both the foundation and the
capstone of wisdom within which philosophy finds its place, or through which
philosophy is protected and at the same time perfected. The Xenophontic, and
especially the Platonic, thesis asserts

exactly the opposite. Philosophy, not in
deed the physiology of the Aristophanean Socrates, but a certain psychology,
Platonic psychology let us say, is both the foundation and the capstone of
wisdom within which poetry finds its place or through which
poetry becomes
good. Socrates was eminently political. He was the philosopher of self-knowl-
edge, and therefore of practical wisdom. He was the erotician par excellence.
This is the generalreply of Plato and Xenophon to Aristophanes. Yet it remains
a question whether Socrates was as music as the greatest poets. Perhaps it was
only Plato who decided the contest between poetry and philosophy in favor of
philosophy through the Platonic dialogue, the greatest of all works of art.
I shall speak first of Xenophon. The great theme of Xenophon may be said
to be this. Socrates was the citizen, the statesman, the captain. Socrates was
political as no philosopher ever was, nay as no statesman ever was. Yet Socra
tes is only one pole in Xenophon's thought. The other pole is Cyms, be it the
founder of the Persian Empire or the younger Cyms whom Xenophon accom
panied in his ascent to Asia Minor. The difference between Socrates and Cyms
indicates that Socrates is profoundly political he was also something else.
while
I stated last time what I believe to be characteristic of Xenophon's way of

writing. To put it very colloquially and provisionally one can compare Xeno
phon's manner to that of Jane Austen, not to speak about the sad and terrible
things not exactly about match-making in Xenophon's case but at any rate
to remember the good things rather than the bad ones. It is preferable to speak
of the good things rather than the bad ones, as Xenophon explicitly says. Now
good is, however, here an ambiguous term. Good may mean to be what is truly
good, or good
may is generally thought to be good. In the defense
mean what
of Socrates especially by Xenophon, Xenophon is very anxious to show that
Socrates was good according to the general notion of goodness, and that is
perhaps not the deepest in Socrates as we shall see.
Now Xenophon's Socratic writings consist of four pieces, the Memorabilia,

the Oeconomicus, the Banquet, and the Apology of Socrates. As for the Mem
orabilia, the largest ofthese books, it consists of two main parts, a short first
part, in which Xenophon refutes the indictment of Socrates, and a much more
extensive second part, in which Xenophon shows that Socrates greatly bene
fited everyone who came into contact with him. Just
as Plato in his Apology of
Socrates, Xenophon explicitly refrains from quoting the indictment with com
plete literalness. The indictment was to the effect that "Socrates commits an
the city recognizes, but intro

which45
unjust act by not recognizing the gods

duces other divinities which are new. He also commits an unjust act by corrupt
indictment, Xenophon that Socrates did

young."
ing the By refuting the shows
not commit these unjust acts of the commission of which he was accused, nor
any other unjust act. He proves that Socrates acted justly in the sense of legal
justice. In the bulk of the Memorabilia Xenophon proves that Socrates greatly
benefited everyone who came into contact with him. But to benefit one's fellow
men is, according to Xenophon, identical with being just, although perhaps not
with being merely legally just. Hence the purpose of the Memorabilia as a
whole is to prove Socrates's justice, both legal and translegal.
The three other Socratic writings can then be expected to deal with Socrates
simply without special regard to his justice, with his activity simply. Now the
166 Interpretation
activity of man consists, according to Xenophon, of speaking, doing, and
thinking or deliberating. In accordance with this tri-partition, Xenophon has

divided his three smaller Socratic writings, as can be seen from the openings of
these writings. The Oeconomicus deals with Socrates's speaking, the Banquet
with his deeds, and the Apology of Socrates with his silent deliberation. Two
special remarks are indispensable at this point. The Banquet deals with the
deeds not only of Socrates, but of a number of other gentlemen as well. More
over, it deals with deeds not performed in earnest or with seriousness, but
performed playfully. We are therefore entitled to look somewhere for Xeno
phon's presentation of deeds which gentlemen performed in earnest. I am in

clined to believe that we have this presentation in his Greek history, the
Hellenica. In accordance with this he treats his narratives of tyrants, which
occur in the Greek history, and only the narratives of tyrants, as excursuses,
that is to say, as parts not properly belonging to the work, for the tyrant is, of
course, the opposite of a gentleman. Secondly, the Memorabilia on the one
hand, and the three other Socratic writings on the other, fulfill fundamentally
different functions. The Memorabilia established the justice of Socrates, the
three others deal with Socrates simply. Now the Apology of Socrates, the last
and shortest, is to a considerable extent a repetition of the last chapter of the
Memorabilia. There are46
a number of minor divergences of which some editors
have tried to get rid by assimilating the text the Apology of Socrates to the
of
text of the last chapter of the Memorabilia, dangerous undertaking since it is

a
based on the complete disregard of the possibility that subtle stylistic differ
ences, to say nothing ofothers, may be required by the two different purposes
of the two writings. To illustrate this one
may the fact that certain
adduce
sections of the Hellenica are used by Xenophon in his writing Agesilaus, with
many minor stylistic changes. The differences between the Agesilaus and the
corresponding sections of the Hellenica must be viewed in the light of the fact
that the Hellenica is a history and the Agesilaus is a eulogy. And as every
college boy knows, or should know, the style required for history differs from
the style required for eulogy. And the editors also in this case correct the text of
the Agesilaus because this simple idea did not occur to some of them.
The Memorabilia, to repeat, are devoted to the subject of Socrates's justice,
to47
and their first part Socrates's legal justice. The accuser had charged Socra
tes with corrupting the young. He had specified this somewhat vague charge by
contending, among other things, that Socrates induced his companions to look
down on the established laws, by saying to them that it is foolish to elect the
magistrates of the city by lot. No one would choose a pilot, a builder, a flute-
player by lot, and yet these kinds of people can not do any serious harm com
pared with the harm which the rulers of the city can do. By such speeches, the
accuser said, Socrates induced his companions to look down with contempt on
the established regime, that is to say, on the democracy, and made them men of
violence. Xenophon goes out of his way to show that a man like Socrates was
bound to be opposed to the use of violence, but he does not even attempt to
deny the charge that Socrates made his companions look down with contempt
on the established regime and its accompaniment, the established laws. He does
not deny this charge because he cannot deny it. Socrates was an outspoken
critic of the Athenian democracy. If legal justice includes full loyalty to the
established political order, Socrates's legal justice was deficient in a point of
utmost importance. He was not unqualifiedly just then.

The accuser also referred to Socrates's relation with two of the most out
standing political criminals of the age, Critias the tyrant and Alcibiades. Xeno
phon shows that Socrates was in no way responsible for what these men did
after they had left Socrates, whom they had left precisely because Socrates
disapproved of their ways. In order to show the wickedness of Alcibiades in
particular, Xenophon records many other things and among them the conversa
tion which Alcibiades once had with his guardian, Pericles. Alcibiades asked
Pericles, what is a law? Pericles fittingly defines law in such a way as to fit
democratic law as such. Law is an enactment of the assembled multitude as to
what should be done or
not48
be done. Alcibiades forces Pericles to grant that
the enactments of the ruling few in an oligarchy or of a tyrant in a tyranny are
equally law, and on the other hand that the law merely imposed by the rulers on
the ruled, and therefore in particular a law merely imposed by the democratic
majority on the minority is an act of violence rather than a law. A law owes its
lawfulness, not to its democratic origin, but to its goodness. The democratic
origin in itself is no better than the tyrannical origin. Xenophon's Socrates
never raises the grave and dangerous question, what is a law. This question is
raisedonly by Xenophon's young and rash Alcibiades. Yet the young and rash
Alcibiades who raises this question in the style characteristic of Socrates had
not yet left Socrates, but was still a companion of Socrates at the time he raised
this Socratic question. The accuser also charged Socrates with frequently quot
ing the verses from the Iliad in which Odysseus is described as using different
language when speaking to outstanding men on the one hand, and when speak
ing to men of the common people on the other. Xenophon does not even at
tempt to deny this charge.
Yet the first and most important part of the charge against Socrates concerns
his alleged impiety. As Xenophon makes clear, the charge of impiety was
graver than the charge of injustice, or of corrupting the young. Only "some
Athenians"
believed that Socrates corrupted the young, whereas "the Athe
nians"
believed that Socrates was not sound as regards the gods. Yet Xenophon
devotes more than three times as much space to proving that Socrates did not
corrupt the young as to proving that Socrates was pious. In order to prove that
Socrates was pious Xenophon mentions the fact that Socrates was sacrificing
frequently and that he was relying on divination, especially on his "demonic

thing". Lest there be any suspicion that Socrates acted differently in private
than in public, he adds the remark that Socrates was always in the open, in
168 Interpretation
he largest number of people. Still, a man may

places49
where could meet the
have no
privacy any kind,
of and yet have private thoughts. Xenophon adds,
therefore, that Socrates was always in the open and talked almost constantly,
yet no one ever heard him say anything impious. Immediately afterwards, how
ever, he admits that Socrates's thought would not necessarily become known
through what he said in the There is one, and only one, univer
market place.
sally known fact which according to Xenophon proves Socrates's piety. This is
Socrates's conduct at the trial of the generals after the battle of the Arginusae,
where Socrates alone upheld his sworn duty not to permit an illegal vote. It is
clear that while this action proves Socrates's justice, it does not necessarily
prove Socrates's piety in the sense of sincere belief in the existence of the gods
worshipped by the city of Athens.
At the end of Xenophon's refutation of the indictment of Socrates, we have

come to realize that Socrates's legal justice and his legal piety could not be
proven, or that Socrates was not unqualifiedly just. This, however, is perfectly
compatible with the fact that he possessed translegal justice, which consists in
benefiting one's fellow men. Socrates benefited his fellow men to the highest
degree by leading them to excellence or to virtue, that is to say, to that kind or
degree of virtue of which the individual in question was capable. For the differ
ence among men in this crucially important to Socrates as he indi

respect was
cated by frequently quoting the Homeric verses in which Odysseus is presented
as having conducted himself in an entirely different way when confronted with
entirely different kinds of people. The bulk of the Memorabilia is meant to

show how beneficent Socrates was. The fourth book of the Memorabilia is the
only part of the work which can be said to present Socrates as a teacher rather
than as an advisor or exhorter. The fourth book opens with the remark that
Socrates helped those who spent their time with him only by being serious
not
but by joking as well, and that he did not approach all men in the same manner.
He was naturally attracted by the good natures, that is to say, by the most
gifted, who revealed themselves as such through the quickness with which they
learned, through their memory, and through their desire for all worth-while
subjects of learning. Not all men possess good natures. Xenophon enumerates
some other human types. The greatest part of the fourth book is devoted to
Socrates's conversations with the handsome Euthydemus, whose characteristic
was, not natural gifts, but conceit. Xenophon refrains from presenting the
teacher Socrates as engaged in conversation with first-rate men. Hence we do
not leam from Xenophon how Socrates, who talked differently to different
kinds of people, talked to first-rate men.
Socrates taught only by conversation. His art consisted in the art, or the
skill, of conversation. The Greek for the skill of conversation is dialec
word50
tics. As for Socrates's dialectics we leam from Xenophon that it was two-fold.
When someone contradicted Socrates, Socrates brought back the subject matter
is?"
to its basic presupposition, that is to say, he raised the question "what
regarding the subject under discussion, and he answered with the participation
of the contradictor. Thus the contradictor himself came to see the truth clearly.
This wemay say is the higher form of dialectics. But, Xenophon goes on,
when Socrates discussed something on his own initiative, that is to say, when
is"
he talked to people who merely listened, he did not raise the question "what
but proceeded through generally accepted opinions, and thus he produced
agreement among the listeners to an extraordinary degree. This latter kind of
dialectics, which leads to agreement as distinguished from truth, is the most

important part of the political art. It is the art which Homer ascribes to Odys
seus. Socrates applied the scientific kind of dialectics when he talked to contra
dictors, that is to say, to men capable to contradict intelligently, to people who

are capable to go beyond the accepted opinions, or who possess good natures.
Socrates applied the political or rhetorical dialectics in his conversations with
the majority of people. Xenophon gives us hardly any specimen of Socrates's

exhibiting the higher kind of dialectics. For it goes without saying that the mere
use of the formula, "what is", does not yet guarantee that the question will be
handled appropriately. If we want to find the serious thought of Socrates as
Xenophon understood it we must translate Socrates's statements ad hominem

into the form they would take if they were addressed to contradictors, or to men
possessing good natures.

Xenophon is very sparing in his explicit praise of Socrates. And when he
praises Socrates, he shrinks from using superlatives. The strongest expression
which he ever uses in this connection is his statement that when he heard
blessed."
Socrates make a certain statement, "he seemed to me to be The state
ment of Socrates was to the effect that while others derived pleasure from
horses, dogs, or birds, he derived pleasure from good friends, "together with
I51
my friends scan the treasures of the wise men of old which they have left
behind in writing and if we see something good, we pick it out, and we regard
another."
it as a great gain when we become useful to one Of Socrates's study
ing with his friends the works of the wise men of old and of their selecting the
best from them, Xenophon does not give us a single example. He draws our
attention to what he regarded as Socrates's most praiseworthy activity, but he
demands from a certain kind of his readers that they transform the intimation
into clear knowledge. In the passage quoted Socrates speaks of his friends, or
his good friends. We may say that Xenophon never records conversations be
"friends"
tween Socrates and his friends in the strict sense. Of course, is an

ambiguous term. It may be applied to friends strictly speaking, as well as to
mere acquaintances, and hence also to the intermediate forms of relationship.
Seven chapters of the Memorabilia are devoted to the subject, Socrates and
friendship. Xenophon records conversations between Socrates and acquain
tances, interlocutors, and comrades of Socrates, but no conversation between

Socrates and a friend of Socrates. The most instructive case is a conversation
between Socrates and Crito. The wealthy Crito complains to Socrates about
170 Interpretation
being blackmailed by informers. Socrates draws Crito's attention to the fact

that Crito, a landed gentleman, uses dogs to keep wolves away from his sheep.
In the same way, he says, he should use the informers to keep other informers
away from his property.Crito would, of course, have to make the arrangement
worth-while to the protecting informer. Crito acts on Socrates's advice. They
find a certain Archedemus who is excellent for this purpose; "Henceforth
Archedemus was one of Crito's friends and was honored by the other friends of
Crito."
We have here between saying that Crito did not belong to
a choice
Socrates's friends, and saying that Socrates honored a useful informer. I sug
gest that we choose the former alternative.
The third book of the Memorabilia shows how Socrates dealt with those
who long and strive for the fair or noble. It ascends from conversations of
Socrates with anonymous individuals, via conversations with acquaintances, to

Glaucon, the hero of Plato's Republic, the son of Ariston,
with52
a conversation
to whom Socrates was benevolent for the sake of Charmides the son of Glaucon
and for the sake of Plato. Immediately after the conversation with Glaucon,
Xenophon records a conversation with Charmides, Charmides being one of the
men for the sake of whom Socrates took an interest in Glaucon. We thus expect
to be treated next to a conversation between Socrates and the other man for the
sake of whom Socrates took an interest in Glaucon, this is to say, a conversa
tion between Socrates and Plato. Instead we get a conversation between Socra
tes and another philosopher, Aristippus. Thereafter the descent begins, which
leads us via outstanding craftsmen, a venal beauty, and a sickly youth, again to
anonymous people. That is to say, Xenophon builds up the argument in such a
way as to point toward a peak, to suggest a peak anonymous people up to

very close people and then again down to anonymous people. Xenophon sug
gests a peak of the third book, or, for that matter, of the whole work. He points
to that peak, a conversation between Socrates and Plato, but he does not supply
it. The peak is missing. This formula can be applied to Xenophon's Socratic
writings as a whole. The highest does not become visible or audible, but it can
be divined. The unsaid is more important than what is said. For the reader this
means that he must be extremely attentive, or extremely careful.
Among all the passages in which Xenophon subtly alludes to Socrates's

chief preoccupation, the most important one is that in which he says that Socra
is."
tes "never ceased considering what each of the beings It appears from the
context that this Socratic consideration is connected with
distinguishing things
according to their kinds or classes. But, to say the least, Xenophon gives very
few examples of this constant preoccupation of Socrates. It is also hard to see
how Socrates constantly consider what each of the beings is, and, at the
could
same time, constantly be in public places and almost constantly talk about
subjects other than what each of the beings is. At
any rate Socrates's constant
preoccupation was the concern with "what is", with the essence of all things. It
is tme, the same Xenophon tells us also that Socrates limited his interest en-
The Origins of Political Science '171
tirely to the human things, but one must consider the context within which
Xenophon makes the latter assertion. He asserts that Socrates did not discuss
the nature of all things, or what the sophists call the cosmos, in order to prove
that no one had ever heard Socrates say something impious or irreligious, for
the study of nature was suspect as the presumptuous attempt to pry into the
secrets of the gods. But I have already indicated what one has to think about
the legal piety of Xenophon's Socrates. When asserting that Socrates limited
his study to human things, Xenophon makes his Socrates wonder whether the
students of nature, that is to say, the philosophers preceding Socrates, now
called the pre-Socratics, did not realize that man cannot discover the truth re
garding nature, for the various philosophers, says Socrates, contradict each
other and behave like madmen. Some of them believe that being is one, but
others that there are infinitely many beings. Some say that all things change,
but others, that nothing changes. Some say that everything comes into being
and perishes, but others say that nothing comes into being or perishes. The
characterization of these contentions as mad permits us to see clearly which
contentions about the whole Socrates regards as sound and sober, namely, that
there is a finite number of beings, that there are some unchangeable and some
changeable things, and that there are some things which do not come into being
and perish. Xenophon's remark about Socrates's chief preoccupation permits us
to render this implication more precise. While there are infinitely many things,
there is only a finite number of kinds or classes of things, that is to say, of the
beings which we intend when we raise the question "what is". Those kinds or
classes, as distinguished from the individual things, are unchangeable and do

not come into being or perish.
Socrates is distinguished from all philosophers who preceded him by the fact
that he sees the core of the whole, or of nature, in noetic heterogeneity. The
whole is not one, homogeneous, but heterogeneous. Yet the heterogeneity
nor
is not sensible heterogeneity, like the heterogeneity of the four elements, for
example, but noetic heterogeneity, essential heterogeneity. It is for this reason
that Socrates become the [originator if there
of]53
could political science. Only

is essential heterogeneity can there be an essential difference between political
things, and things which are not political. The discovery of noetic hetero
geneity permits one to let things be what they are, and takes away the compul
sion to reduce essential differences to something common. The discovery of
noetic heterogeneity means the vindication of what one could call common
sense. Socrates called it a return from madness to sanity or sobriety, or, to use
the Greek term, sophrosyne, which I would translate by moderation. Socrates

fact that, in important is the
most54
discovered the paradoxical a way, the most truth
obvious truth, or the truth of the surface. Furthermore, the fact that there is a
variety of being, in the sense of kinds or classes, means that there cannot be a
single total experience of being, whether that experience is understood mysti
cally or romantically, the specifically romantic assertion being that feeling, or

172 Interpretation
sentiment, or a certain kind of sentiment, is this total experience. There is

indeed mental vision, or perception, of this or that kind or pattern, but the
be h-
many mental patterns, many mental perceptions, must connected by
gismos, by by
putting two and two together.
reasoning,
By recognizing the fact that the political is irreducible to the non-political,
that the political is sui generis, Socrates does justice to the claim raised on
behalf of the political, or by the political itself, namely by the political commu
nity, by the polis. The polis presents itself as exalted far above the household
and the individual. Yet this does
necessarily mean that Socrates recognized
not
the claim of the polis to be the highest simply, or, which amounts to the same
thing, to be the authoritative interpreter of the highest simply, or to be beyond

the peak. The judgment on the status of the political will depend on the result
of the analysis of the political. Socrates's may be said
analysis of the political
to start from the phenomenon of law, for laws appear to be the specifically
political phenomenon. The reason is this. The political appears to be the do
minion of the most resplendent activity of adult freemen and who is more
resplendent than adult freemen? and that which gives adult freemen as such
their character, or that which limits them, is law, and law alone. Law means
primarily the utterance of the assembled citizens which tells everyone, includ
ing the full citizens, what they ought to do and what they may not do, not until
further notice, or for a given time, but forever. The well-being of the city, nay,
its being, depends on law, on law-abidingness, or justice. Justice in this sense
is the political virtue par excellence. Justice as law-abidingness comes to sight
as a virtue by the consideration of the alternatives, which are force and law. It
is with a view to law that the distinction between legitimacy and illegitimacy is
primarily made. "Kingship is mle over willing human beings and in accordance
with the laws of the city, whereas the rale over unwilling human beings and
tyranny."
according to the will of the ruler is This remark seems to apply only
to monarchs, but Socrates goes on to say, "The regime in which the magis
tracies are filled from among those who complete the laws or the customs is
aristocracy. The regime in which the magistracies are filled on the basis of
property qualification is plutocracy. The regime in which the magistracies are

democracy."
filled from all is This may be thought to mean that republics too
can be either royal or tyrannical, the decisive point being whether the mlers are
limited by law or not. Yet there is this obvious difficulty, that the mlers who
ought to be subject to the law are themselves the cause or the origin of the law,
and the cause or origin of the law cannot as such be subject to the law the
famous problem of sovereignty in modem times. Still lawgivers cannot act
arbitrarily. They are supposed to enact good laws. Hence we may have to make
a distinction other than that between legitimate and illegitimate regimes. One
may have to make a distinction between good as regimes most
regimes, likely
to produce good laws, and bad regimes, as regimes most likely to produce bad
laws. If the quality enabling men to make good laws is wisdom, the good
regime will be the rale of the wise. In other words, the only sound title to rale
is knowledge, not inheritance, nor election, nor force, nor fraud, but only
knowledge of how to rale can make a man a king or a ruler. The man of the
highest political wisdom is superior law,
to any only because he alone can
not
be the origin of excellent laws, but likewise because he has a flexibility which
laws however wise necessarily lack. The man of the highest political wisdom is
a seeing law, whereas every law proper is blind to some extent. The justice of
the tme ruler cannot consist then in lawabidingness or in legal justice. He must
be guided by translegal justice, by the habit of benefiting human beings, of
helping them to become as good as possible, and tolive as happily as possible.
He must assign to everyone not necessarily what a possibly foolish law declares
to be his, but what is good or fitting for him. To use a Xenophontic example, if
a big boy owns a small coat and a small boy owns a big coat, we must take
away the big coat from the small boy and give it to the big boy, and vice versa.
That is to say, by questioning the ultimacy of law, we question also the ulti-
macy of legal property.

At the beginning of Xenophon's Oeconomicus Socrates leads the argument
from the view that the property of a man is the totality of his possessions, via
the view that the property of a man is the totality of his useful possessions, or
possessions useful to him, to the view that only that can be regarded as a man's
property which he knows how to use, that is to say, how to use well. So heroin
could not possibly be the property of a juvenile delinquent. We are thus
brought up against the question as to whether unwise men can possess any
property except under the strictest supervision of the wise. There is a simple
formula expressing the view that the political art at its highest transcends law as
such, namely, the thesis of Socrates that the political or royal art is identical
with the economic art, that is to say, the art by means of which the father,
husband, his children, wife, and
master rules slaves. Neither Xenophon's Soc
rates nor Xenophon himself ever speaks of natural law, or natural right, eo
nomine. But his Socrates once speaks of unwritten law. One example of un
written law, that is to say, of laws which are self-enforcing since their trans
gression damages the transgressor without any human intervention, is the
prohibition against incest between parents and children. As little as Plato's
Socrates in the Republic does Xenophon's Socrates refer in this crucial context
to the prohibition against incest between brothers and sisters.
Summarizing the analysis of the political given by Xenophon's Socrates, we
may say that there is fundamental agreement between that analysis and the
in the Platonic dialogues, especially the Republic and the States
analysis given
man, only Xenophon is much more laconic, reserved, or bashful than Plato.
Now we have followed Xenophon's Socrates up to the point where the absolute
rale of the wise appeared to be the only wise solution to the political problem.
The wise would assign to every unwise man the thing which he is best fitted to
use, and the work which he is best fitted to do. He would exercise his rule by
174 Interpretation
virtue of his wisdom, i.e., of the recognition of his wisdom by the unwise. He
would sway the unwise by persuasion alone. But will the unwise be able to
recognize the wisdom of the wise? Is there no limit to the persuasive power of
the wise? Socrates, who he thought, illustrates this difficulty by his

lived what
relation to the city of Athens. Socrates failed to persuade the

city of Athens of
his goodness. He illustrates it in a more homely way by his relation to his wife
Xanthippe. In Xenophon's Banquet, Socrates is asked by a companion why he
did not educate Xanthippe, but had a wife who, of all the women present, past,
and future, is probably the most difficult. Socrates replied that just as a man
who wants to become good at handling horses will leam to handle the most
spirited horse, for if he can handle such a horse he will be able handle any
to
horse, in the same way he, Socrates, desiring to live with human beings ac
quired Xanthippe, well knowing that if he could control her, he could easily get
along with all other human beings. The utmost one could say is that Socrates
Xanthippe;9
succeeded somehow in living with he certainly did not succeed in
educating her, or in ruling her by persuasion. When his son Lamprocles was
angry with his mother because of the abominable things she had said to him out
of her wild temper, Socrates talked to Lamprocles and silenced him. He did not
even try to silence, to say nothing of appease, Xanthippe. If it is then impossi
ble that the wise can rule the unwise by persuasion, and since it is equally
impossible, considering the numerical relation of the wise and the unwise, that
the wise should rale the unwise by force, one has to be satisfied with a very
indirect rale of the wise. This indirect rale of the wise consists in the rale of
laws, on the making of which the wise have had some influence. In other
words, the unlimited rale of undiluted wisdom must be replaced by the rule of
wisdom diluted by consent. Yet laws cannot be the mlers strictly speaking,
they must be applied, interpreted, administered, and executed. The best solu
tion of the political problem is then the rale of men who can best complete the
laws, supplement the essential deficiency of the law. The completion of the
laws is equity. The best solution of the political problem is then the regime in
which power rests with the equitable, in Greek, the epieikeis, which means in
Greek at the same time the better people, and this means for all practical pur
poses the landed gentry. Xenophon has given a sketch of what he regarded as
the best regime in the first book his Education of Cyrus, his political work
of
par excellence. Xenophon that he has found the best regime in

tacitly claims
Persia, prior to the emergence of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire. The
best regime is a greatly improved Sparta. Every free man is a citizen and has
access to all the exception of
offices, with
hereditary kingship, under the condi
tion that he has successfully attended the public schools, public schools in the
American sense. The regime seems then to be a democracy. But, unfortunately,
the poor need their young sons on their small farms, and therefore only the sons
of the well-to-do are in a position to acquire the right to the
holding of public
office. The best regime is then an aristocracy disguised as democracy. The
principle animating this best regime comes to sight when Cyras is about to
destroy it, or to transform it into an absolute monarchy. Cyras urges the gentle
men, the ruling class, to think no longer merely of decency, excellence, or
virtue, but above all of the things which one can acquire through virtue, that is
to say, of increasing their wealth. The principle of the best regime is then the
cultivation of human excellence, as opposed to the increase of wealth.

As Xenophon indicates by presenting his utopia in a work of fiction, the
Education of Cyrus, he does not believe that the best regime as he understood it
ever was actual, and thence that it is likely ever to become actual, in spite of its
being possible. Political life as it always was, and as it always will be, is more
or less imperfect. For all practical purposes political greatness is generous and
effective leadership in a tolerably good republic. The greatest example which
Xenophon himself exhibits is that of the Spartan general, Dercylidas, the prede
cessor in Asia Minor of the somewhat pompous martinet, Agesilaus. People
called Dercylidas Sisyphus with a view to his outstanding resourcefulness. He
was once punished by the Spartan authorities for what they regarded as lack of
discipline, and he always loved to be away from home. Xenophon indicates

other compromise solutions which are important given the practical impos
sibility of the best regime. There is no question for him that the life most fitting
a gentleman is that of
administering one's wealth rather than increasing it, that
is to say, one's inherited landed estate. But after his Socrates has set forth this
view with all possible emphasis, he reports the divergent practice of an Athe
nian whose son was particularly well known as a gentleman. In the opinion of
the father was an enthusiastic lover of farming. He could
gentleman55
that son
not see a run down farm without buying it and making it flourish. When told
this story by the son, Socrates asks, "Did your father keep all the farms which
money?"
he cultivated, or did he sell them, when he could get much The son
Zeus!"
replied, "He sold, by The compromise between the gentlemanly self-

restraint regarding money, on the one hand, and greed on the other, or between
farming and trade, is trading in farms. It is not necessary to discuss here the
extreme concession to human frailty, which Xenophon considered, namely,
beneficent tyranny. Generally speaking, acting consistently on his literary

by
principle of saying as little as possible about the highest, Xenophon was com
pelled or enabled, more than any other classic, to pave the way for Machia
velli, who, incidentally, generously acknowledged this debt. Only what in

Xenophon had been a principle of writing became in Machiavelli a principle of
thinking.
The crucial result of Socrates's analysis of the political, as Xenophon pre
sents it, is that the political is essentially imperfect, the essence of the political
being the dilution of wisdom by consent on the part of the unwise, or the
dilution of wisdom by folly. Hence the claim of the political to be beyond the
peak, or to be simply the highest, proves to be unfounded. Man's true excel
beyond the political, is transpolitical. Xenophon's Soc-

lence or virtue exists or
176 Interpretation
rates is the representative of man's transpolitical excellence, whereas his Cyrus

is the representative of that life which is highest if the principle characteristic of
the political is adhered to and thought through. The polarity of Socrates and
Cyrus corresponds fundamental tension between philosophy and the
to the
polis. Xenophon has presented the tension between the two ways of life, the
political and the transpolitical most clearly in the Oeconomicus, which is his
Socratic speech par excellence.
The Oeconomicus is a conversation between Socrates and Crito's son Crit

obulus, a young man who did not do too well. Socrates encourages Critobulus
to dedicate himself to the management of the household, of which farming is a
distinguished, if subordinate, part. Socrates acts as a teacher of the art of farm

ing or of the art of managing the household in general. This contrasts with what
he does when he is confronted with a young man eager to leam the art of a
general. Xenophon's Socrates appears to possess the art of the general, but he
declines it,
to teach he is perfectly willing to teach the peaceful art of
whereas
farming. Socrates had acquired his command of the art of farming, not by
farming, but by having had, once in his life, an extended conversation with a
gentleman farmer called Ischomachus. He had learned that art in one sitting,
which took place in the cloister of a temple in Athens, rather far away from any
farm. His teaching of the art of farming consistedin transmitting to a young
man a teaching which he had acquired in day,
one in one sitting, just by listen
ing. Yet, as has been indicated, what Socrates teaches is not merely the art of
farming, but the whole economic art, or the art of managing the household,
which includes above everything else the art of educating and managing one's
wife, an art which Socrates had also learned at that single session with Is
chomachus. More than this, what Socrates teaches young Critobulus is the way of
life of the perfect gentleman, or perfect gentlemanship, a subject which com
prises the economic art, and which was the primary and comprehensive theme
regarding which Socrates consulted the gentleman farmer, Ischomachus, on the

occasion of that single session once upon a time. Socrates did not learn perfect
gentlemanship by thinking or by dialectics, but merely by listening, just as he

transmits this art of gentlemanship to a young man who merely listens. Perfect
gentlemanship is not a science, nor is it based on a science, but it is guided by
opinions alone, by things which you understand fully by listening. In other
words, no intellectual effort is required for grasping the principles of ordinary

morality. Ordinary morality consists not in knowing, but in doing, whereas as
regards the highest morality, the transpolitical morality, virtue is knowledge.
The first part of the teaching which Socrates transmits to Critobulus con
cerns, as I said, the education and management of one's wife. Ischomachus is

very proud of the way in which he has educated his. He could not know at that
time at which he gave Socrates his glowing report about the way in which he
had educated his wife that in later years this woman would have a love affair
with their son-in-law Callias, the son of Hipponicus, less than a year after
Callias had married their daughter, and that as a consequence of this Callias
had Ischomachus's Ischomachus's daughter together in his house, just
wife and
as Pluto or Hades had Demeter and her daughter Persephone together in his
house. He was, therefore, called Hades in Athens, and Plato's Protagoras is
based in its setting on this story, the Protagoras taking place in the house of
Callias, and there are quite a few allusions to the fact that we are there in
Hades. But this only in passing. Now this is not merely a joke, but indicates
the great problem of the relation between theory and practice, or between
knowledge and virtue. Ischomachus teaches his wife theory. What she will
do is a different story. However this may be, the center of the Oeconomicus is
occupied by a direct confrontation of thelife of the perfect gentleman, Is
chomachus, and the life of Socrates. The two ways of life are presented as
incompatible. One most obvious difference between the two ways of life is that
one must be well off, or, as Aristotle puts it, be properly equipped, in
one must
order to be a perfect gentleman, whereas Socrates was rather poor. Since these
remarks occur in a work on economics, one must raise the question regarding
the economic basis Socrates's life, Socrates's means of support. The answer
of
conveyed through the work is that Socrates did not have to

worry since he had
friends. There is this nice passage in which the question comes up that from all
the preceding things it follows that friends are money, and the answer given is,
are."
"By Zeus, they

Yet while according to Xenophon and his Socrates the transpolitical life is
higher in dignity than the political life, they did everything in their power to
instill respect for the claims of the city, and of political life, and of everything
connected with it. Here again moderation proves to be the characteristic quality
of Socrates. We have shown before that recognition of the essential difference
between the political and the non-political or, more generally, recognition of
the existence of essential differences, or of noetic heterogeneity, appeared as
moderation in opposition to the madness of the philosophers preceding Socra

tes. But Socratic moderation means also, and in a sense primarily, the recogni
tion of opinions which are not tme, but salutary to political life. Socrates,
Xenophon says, did not separate from each other wisdom and moderation. The
is indeed not the highest, but it is first because it is the
political most urgent. It
is related to philosophy as continence is related to virtue proper, it is the foun
dation, the indispensable condition. From here why Socrates
we can understand
could be presented as having limited his study entirely to human or political

things. The human or political things are indeed the clue to all things, to the
whole of nature, since they are the link or bond between the highest and the
lowest, or since man is a microcosm, or since the human or political things,

and their corollaries are the form in which the highest principles first come to
sight, or, since the false estimate of human things is fundamental and primary
a
error. Philosophy is primarily political philosophy because philosophy is the

ascent from the obvious, the most massive, the most urgent, to what is highest
178 Interpretation
in dignity.Philosophy is primarily political philosophy because political philos

ophy is required for protecting the inner sanctum of philosophy.
This lecture has been a bit longer than I would have wished, and also my
plan has gone wrong for some other reasons, so I will devote the next lecture to
the main thread of Plato's Republic, and the last one on Friday to the subject,
Plato and the Poets. I think you have seen by now that this is an absolutely
crucial subject for Plato, the relative relation or status of poetry and philoso
phy. One could venture to say that the alternative to philosophy, to Platonic
philosophy, is not any other philosophy, be it that of the pre-Socratics or of
Aristotle, or what-not, but poetry, and therefore we really deal with the crucial
issue by raising the question of how Plato conceives of the relation between
philosophy and poetry.
(NOVEMBER 5, 1958)
Among those who approach Plato in order to become enlightened by him

about Socrates, it has become customary to pay the greatest attention to certain
dialogues called the early dialogues, and especially to the Apology of Socrates.
The Apology of Socrates may be said to be Socrates's own account, given on
the most solemn occasion, of his way of life; and its solemnity may be thought
to be increased by the fact that that account is a public account, an account
given in public to the public par excellence, whereas Socrates's own account of
his way of life which he gave on the day of his death in the Phaedo lacks the
solemnity of the public, and, in addition, is Plato's own writing. This consid
eration, or any consideration of this kind, suffers from the defect that it ex
presses a plausible thought which cannot lay claim to be in conformity with

Plato's thought. For we know the Platonic Socrates only through Plato. The
Apology of Socrates is as much a Platonic writing as any other Platonic writing.
The Apology of Socrates is even a Platonic dialogue, the dialogue of Socrates

with the people of Athens. It is a Platonic work of art, and not a report. We
must pass through Plato's thought in order to understand the thought of the
Platonic Socrates. And Plato has presented his thought exclusively in works of
art and not in treatises. What must one understand by a work of art? We remind
ourselves of the story told in praise of the Greek painter that he painted grapes
so perfectly that birds flew to peck at them. The man who told this story
characterized the work of art by two features. It is an imitation of something,
and the imitation creates the delusion that it is thething imitated. The imitation
is perfect if it makes one forget the delusion. The delusion consists in the
disregard of something essential, the abstraction from something essential.
Painted grapes cannot be eaten, to say nothing of the fact that they are not
three-dimensional. But grapes are not painted for the sake of birds. The ab
straction from something essential which characterizes the work of art serves
the purpose of bringing out something more essential, of heightening something

more essential. In works like the Platonic dialogues abstraction is made in the
first place from We merely hear people talk. We do not, strictly
visibility.
speaking, see them.And secondly abstraction is made from chance. Everything

happening in the work is meaningful or necessary. The abstraction from the
visible and the fortuitous serves the purpose of making us concentrate on the
audible and the necessary, on the necessity of the speech, and in the speech.
The problem of the Platonic dialogue is, in a way, insoluble. There exists no
Platonic utterance about the meaning of the Platonic dialogues. Still, Plato's
Socrates gives us a most important hint, when he speaks of the essential defect
of all writings. A writing, as distinguished from a wise speech, says the same
things to all men. The essential defect of writings is inflexibility. Since Plato,
in contradistinction to Socrates, did produce writings, one is entitled to assume
that the Platonic dialogues are meant to be writings which are free from the
essential defect of writings. They are writings which, if properly read, reveal
themselves to possess the flexibility of speech, and they are properly read if the
necessity of every part of them becomes clear. The Platonic dialogues do say,
and they are meant to say, different things to different men. This thought,
which can be developed in great detail without too great difficulty, has only
one defect. At any rate, as it was stated it is based on the premise that Plato's
Socrates is Plato's spokesman. Yet what entitles us to accept that premise?
Socrates is not always Plato's spokesman. He is not Plato's spokesman in the
Timaeus, the Critias, the Sophist, the Statesman, the Parmenides, and the
Laws. What does Plato signify by making Socrates a silent listener to other
men's speeches? As long as we do not know this we cannot have clarity regard
ing Socrates's alleged spokesmanship. Certainly Plato never said that his Socra
tes is his spokesman. When speaking of dramas as distinguished from

narratives his Socrates says that in a drama the author conceals himself, that is
to say, the author does not say a word in his own name. And the Platonic
dialogue is a sort of drama. In the case of Shakespeare, for instance, who

would dare to say that according to Shakespeare life is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Everyone would say that these are
the words, not of Shakespeare, but of Macbeth, and no conclusion whatever
can be drawn from the fact that Shakespeare wrote these words as to Shake
speare's holding the view expressed by these words. Perhaps one can even
prove that Shakespeare did not hold the view by considering the character of
the speaker and the situation of the speaker when he uttered them. Perhaps the
action of the play refutes Macbeth's utterances. Perhaps the dramatic poet re
vealshis thought exclusively by the play as a whole, by the action, and not by
speech, that is to say, the speeches of his characters. This much can we say
safely, that the distinction between speeches and deeds, and the implication that
the deeds are more trustworthy than the speeches, is basic for the understanding
of works like the Platonic dialogues. The deeds are the clue to the meaning of
180 Interpretation
the speeches. More precisely, perhaps, the unthematic, that which is not in the
center of attention of the speakers as speakers, is the clue to the thematic, to
that which is in the center of attention of the speakers as speakers. No doubt it
is paradoxical to say that an utterance of the Platonic Socrates is no more
revealing of Plato's thought than the quoted utterance of Macbeth is of the

thought of Shakespeare. Let us then retract this paradoxical suggestion, and let
us take Plato's Socrates as Plato's spokesman. But this will be of no help, for
Plato's Socrates is famous for his irony. To have a spokesman who is famous
for his irony is tantamount to having no spokesman at all. Irony means primar
ily dissimulation. It comes to mean noble dissimulation. The superior man who
many,"
is aware ofhis superiority is "ironical in his relations to the says Aris
totle. That is to say, he does not let his inferiors feel their inferiority, or his
superiority. He conceals his superiority. But if his superiority consists in wis
dom, his noble dissimulation must consist in concealing his wisdom, that is to
say, in presenting himself as less wise than he is, or in not saying what he
knows. And given the fact that there is a great variety of types of unwisdom,
his irony will consist in speaking differently to different kinds of people. Irony
comes to mean to answer general questions differently when speaking to differ
ent kinds of people, as well as never answering, but always raising, questions.
The beginning of understanding of the Platonic dialogues is wonder.
Wonder means here not merely admiration of beauty, but also and above all
perplexity, recognition of the sphinx-like character of the Platonic dialogues.

To begin with we have no other clue than the outward appearance which one
must try to describe. To begin with the Platonic dialogue is one big question
mark, and nothing else. But, fortunately, there are many Platonic dialogues.
The very manyness and variety is an articulation of the theme, Platonic dia
logue, and hence sheds some light. The student of the Platonic dialogues is in
the position of a zoologist confronted by an unknown species, or rather genus,

of animals. His first task is to classify in accordance with the most obvious,
with the visible appearance. I mention three classifications which are
evidently
necessary. In the first place the distinction between Socratic and non-Socratic
dialogues, as the distinction between dialogues in which Socrates conducts the
conversation, and dialogues in which someone other than Socrates conducts the
conversation. Secondly, the distinction between performed and narrated dia
logues, the performed dialogues looking like dramas. In the case of the per
formed dialogues there is no bridge between the characters of the dialogue and
the reader. In the narrated dialogues a participant in the dialogue gives an
account of the conversation to a non-participant, and hence also to us, the

reader. In a narrated dialogue the narrator, who may be Socrates himself, can
tell us the reason why he said what he said to a participant, as well as his
observations regarding the participants which he could not with
propriety make
to the participants. For instance, if the Republic were not a narrated
dialogue,
we could not know that at a given moment Thrasymachus was red in his face
The Origins of Political Science -181
not because he was ashamed, but because he was hot from the day. In a nar
rated dialogue Socrates can make us into people who are in the know together
with him, or even his accomplices. Thirdly, there is a distinction between vol
untary and compulsory dialogues, voluntary dialogues being dialogues which
Socrates spontaneously seeks, while compulsory dialogues are dialogues which
Socrates cannot with propriety avoid.

If we look at Plato's Apology of Socrates from this point of view we see that
this dialogue between Socrates and the Athenian people, or his accusers, is a
performed and compulsory dialogue. Socrates did not spontaneously seek this
conversation, nordoes he tell us the reason why he says what he said, or his
observations regarding the participants, which he could not with propriety make
participants'
to the face. We would have to turn to the Gorgias, for instance, in

order to find an answer to the question regarding this background of the Apol
ogy of Socrates, where we find that Socrates explains that in his position as an
accused he was in the position of a physician accused by the cook before a

tribunal of children that he did not give them the nice candies which they would
like to have, which he could not with propriety say of the Athenians in the
Apology of Socrates. Accordingly we note that the way in which the Platonic
Socrates presents himself in his performed and
compulsory conversation with
the Athenian people
assembled, differs from the way in which the Platonic
Socrates is presented by Plato in the dialogues as a whole. The Apology of
Socrates makes us expect to find Socrates presented as engaged in conversa
in56
tions the market-place anybody with who just happened to be there. But the
Platonic Socrates in deed, as distinguished from his compulsory self-presenta
tion in public, is extremely selective. He talks with youths who are promising,
sophists, rhetoricians, rhapsodes, or soothsayers, extremely rarely with retired
generals or politicians, rarely ordinary citizens as such. He

and still more with
is famous, or ridiculed, for using the examples of shoemakers and other crafts
men, but in contradistinction to Xenophon's Socrates, the Platonic Socrates
never has a discussion with a craftsman. He always speaks about shoemakers,
but never with shoemakers. On the other hand we find him never engaged in a
conversation with a man who is

clearly his inferior. He is silently present
not
when Timaeus explains the cosmos, and he silently observes the Eleatic
Stranger training Theaetetus or the young Socrates. It is tme, in the Parmenides

we find Socrates engaged in a conversation with Parmenides, but there Parmen
ides is clearly the superior, Socrates still being very young. To summarize, the
Platonic Socrates, outside of the Platonic Socrates's self-presentation in his sole
public speech, converses only with people who are not common people, who in
one way or other belong to an elite, although never to the elite in the highest
sense, with inbetween people. The Platonic dialogue refutes the Platonic Socra
tes's public self-presentation.
This observation induces us to pay the greatest attention, to begin with, to
the Republic. The Republic is the only dialogue narrated by Socrates which is
182 Interpretation
compulsory. Socrates is compelled, not indeed by the Athenian demos, but by

some young companion, to stay in the Piraeus, and this compulsory stay sup
plies the occasion for an extensive conversation on justice, in the course of
which Socrates founds
a perfectly just city, not in deed, but in speech. Before
considering any Platonic dialogue, one must consider the fact that there are
many Platonic dialogues, or that Plato's work consists of many dialogues be
cause it imitates the manyness, the variety, the heterogeneity of being. The
imitation is not a simple reproduction. The individual Platonic dialogue is not a
chapter from the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences or from a system

of philosophy, nor is it the product of an occasion, or the relic of a stage of
Plato's development. The individual dialogue is characterized less by its subject
matter than by the manner in which it treats the subject matter. Each^dialogue
treats its subject matter by means of a specific abstraction, and hence in a
specific distortion. For instance, the Euthyphro deals with piety while being
silent about the soul, or in abstraction from the phenomenon of the soul.
To understand a dialogue means, therefore, to recognize the principle guid
ing the specific abstraction which characterizes the dialogue in question. This
principle is revealed primarily by the setting of the dialogue, time, place, char
acters, action. The discussion taking place indialogue is necessary primarily

a
with a view to the character, not of the subject matter, but of the setting in
which the dialogue takes place. It is reasonable to expect that the setting was
chosen by Plato as most appropriate with a view to the subject matter, but on
the other hand what Plato thought about the subject matter comes to our sight
first through the medium of the setting. As for the setting of the Republic, the
conversation takes place in the Piraeus, the harbor of Athens, the seat of
Athens'
naval and commercial power, in the house of a wealthy metic, on a
day in which a new and strange religious procession took place for the first
time. The surroundings are then at the opposite pole of old and patrician
Athens, which lives in the spirit of the ancestral. The surroundings bespeak
what in the light of the tradition would appear as political decay. Yet Piraeus
had also another connotation. There
in the Republic ten companions, men
are
tioned by name. Ten in the Piraeus. This is a reminder of the rale of the Thirty
Tyrants, during which there were ten men in control of the Piraeus. We are
thus remindedof the attempt, with which Plato was himself somehow con
nected, putting down the democracy and restoring an oligarchic or aristo

of
cratic regime. Yet the characters of the Republic have

nothing in common with
the oligarchic reaction. The family of Cephalus, in whose house the conversa
tion takes place, as well as Niceratus, were victims of the Tyrants. Just
Thirty
as the chief interlocutors in Plato's dialogue on courage are defeated generals,
and the chief interlocutors in his dialogue on moderation are future tyrants, at
any rate some of the individuals in his dialogue on justice are innocent victims
of a rebellion made in the name of justice. The restoration which Socrates
performs in the Republic is then not likely to be a political restoration, it rather
will be a restoration on a different plane. The spirit of this Socratic restoration
is indicated by the fact that Socrates and the other participants, from uptown
Athens, are kept in the Piraeus by the promise of a dinner, as well as of a torch
race in honor of a goddess. But we hear nothing further about either the torch
race or the dinner. Torch race and dinner are replaced by a conversation on
justice. The feeding of the body is replaced by the feeding of the soul. The very
extended conversation on justice constitutes in itself a training in self-control
regarding the pleasures and even the needs of the body, or it constitutes an act
of asceticism. When Thomas More wrote,57
in the imitation of the Republic, his

much less ascetic Utopia, he arranged that the description of his perfect com
monwealth be given after luncheon.
The antagonist of Socrates in the Republic is Thrasymachus, the rhetorician.
As becomes clear from a brief exchange between a follower of Thrasymachus
and a follower of Socrates, by which the discussion between Thrasymachus and
Socrates is interrupted, Thrasymachus starts from the quite unparadoxical view

that the just is identical with the legal. Since what is legal or not depends in
each case on the decision of the lawgiver or the government, the just is then
identical with the will of the stronger. The manner in which Thrasymachus
behaves he forbids to say certain things, or forbids to give certain answers,
and he demands a fine from Socrates for payment, for which Plato's brother
vouches, just as Plato himself vouches for a payment of another kind demanded
from Socrates on the day of his accusation the manner in which Thra
symachus behaves reminds us of the behavior of the city of Athens towards
Socrates. The thesis of Thrasymachus, that the just is the legal, is the thesis of
the actual polis, which does not permit an appeal beyond its laws. In a sense
Thrasymachus is the polis. He plays the polis. He is able to play the polis
because he possesses the art of rhetoric. Socrates succeeds easily in crashing
and in silencing Thrasymachus, but Thrasymachus continues to play a role in

he58
the Republic after has been silenced. At the beginning of the fifth book
there occurs a scene which reminds us of the scene with which the Republic
opens. In both scenes we have deliberation ending in a decision,

a an imitation
of the action of the city. But whereas in the first deliberation, or decision,
Thrasymachus does not take part, he does take part in the second. By the
beginning of the fifth book Thrasymachus has become a member of the city.
The restoration of the city in speech includes the integration of Thrasymachus

into the city. The restoration of justice on the new plane requires the help of
Thrasymachus's art, the art of rhetoric.

In Aristophanes 's Clouds, we may recall, Socrates had been responsible for
the revelation of the weakness of the Just Speech. The Just Speech was weak
because it was based principally on mythology, on the stories told about the
gods. The gods, the alleged guardians of justice, were manifestly unjust. If
Socrates is to show the strength of the Just Speech, and this is naturally his
primary function in the Republic, he must therefore wholly divorce justice from
184 Interpretation
mythology, from all ancient

hearsay or tradition. The Platonic Socrates shows,
then, in deed the strength of the Just Speech, but he shows the strength of an
entirely new, novel, unheard of, Just Speech. The Platonic Socrates transcends
the generally accepted and impure notion of justice, according to which justice
consistsin giving to everyone what is his due, for what is a man's due is
determined by custom, law, positive law, and there is no necessity that the
positive law itself be just. What the positive law declares to be just is as such
just merely by virtue of positing, of convention, therefore one must seek for
what is just intrinsically, by nature. We must seek a social order which as such
is intrinsically just, the polis which is in accordance with nature. Of such a city
there is no example. It is wholly novel. It must be founded in order to be. In
the Republic it is founded in speech.
Yet what guidance do we possess after we have been compelled to question
the view that justice consists in giving everyone his due? According to the
generally view, justice is not merely the habit of giving everyone what
accepted
is due to him, it is also meant to be beneficial. We shall then say that justice is
the habit of giving to everyone what is good for him. According to Aristotle the
first impression he received from the Republic is the philanthropic character of
the scheme presented therein. If justice is the habit of giving to everyone what
is for him, justice is the preserve of the wise.
good For just as the physician
alone what is truly good for the body of a man, only the
knows wise man, the
physician of the soul, knows what is truly good for the whole man. Further
more, as the habit of giving to everyone what is good for him, justice is utterly
selfless. It is selfless devotion to others, pure serving others, or serving the
whole. Since in a just city everyone is supposed to be just in the sense that he
be dedicated to the service of others, no one will think of himself, of his own
happiness, of his own. Total communism, communism regarding property,

women, and children, is merely the institutional expression of justice. But is
the well-being of the whole not identical with the well-being of all its mem
bers? In other words, why is everyone to dedicate himself entirely to the polisl
The answer is this. The good city is the necessary and sufficient condition for
the highest according to his capacity. The just city
excellence or virtue of each
is city in which being a good citizen is simply the same as being a good man.
a
Everyone is to dedicate himself, not to the pursuit which is most pleasant or

attractive to him, but to that which makes him as good a man as possible. Yet
justice implies some reciprocity of giving and taking. The just city is then the
city in which everyone does that which he is
by nature fitted to do, and in
which everyone receives that which is by nature good, not attractive or pleas
ant, for him. The just city is a perfectly rational society.

Nothing is fair or
noble, nothing even is sacred or holy, except what is useful for that city, that is
to say, in the last resort, for the greatest possible perfection or virtue of each
member. To mention only the most
shocking and striking example,
the family
and the sacred prohibitions against incest between brothers and sisters must
give way to the demands of eugenics. The whole scheme presupposes on every
point the absolute rale of the wise or of the philosophers. But how are the wise
to find obedience on the part of the unwise? You see this is the same problem
which we found in Xenophon. The obedience would not be forthcoming with

out the use of force. Therefore the few wise need the support of a fairly large
number of loyal auxiliaries. But how can the wise secure the loyalty of the
auxiliaries, who as such are not wise? The wise rale the auxiliaries by persua
sion, andby persuasion alone. For in the goodcity the auxiliaries will not be
hampered by the laws. Persuasion is not demonstration. The unwise, and espe
cially the auxiliaries, are persuaded by means of a noble deception. Even the
rational society, the society according to truth and nature, is not possible with
out a fundamental untruth.
That fundamental untruth consists of two parts. Its first part consists in the
replacement of the earth as the common mother of all men, and therewith of the
fraternity of all men, by a part of the earth, the land, the fatherland, the terri
tory, or the fraternity of only the fellow citizens. The first part of the funda
mental untruth consists then in assigning the natural status of the human species
to a part of the human species, the citizens of a given city. The second part of
the fundamental untruth consists in ascribing divine origin to the existing social
hierarchy59
hierarchy, or more generally stated, in identifying the existing social
with the natural hierarchy; that is to say, even the polis according to nature is
notsimply natural, or even the most rational society is not simply rational.
Hence the crucial importance for it of the art of persuasion. This difficulty
recurs in an even sharper form when the question is raised as to how one can
transform an actual polis into the best polis. This transformation would be
wholly impossible if the citizens of an actual polis, that is to say, men who
have not undergone the specific education prescribed in the Republic for the
w
citizens of the best city this transformation would be wholly impossible if
the citizens of an actual polis could not be persuaded to bow to the rale of the
philosophers. The problem of the best city would be altogether insoluble if the
multitude were not amenable to persuasion by the philosophers. It is in the
context of the assertion that the multitude is persuadable by the philosophers, .
. .
(unclear) . . . that Socrates declares that he and Thrasymachus just have
become friends. Thrasymachus must be integrated into the best city because the
best city is not possible without the art of Thrasymachus. To the best of my
knowledge the only student of the Republic who has understood this crucial fact
was Farabi, an Islamic philosopher who flourished around 900 and who was the
founder of medieval Aristotelianism. According to Farabi the way of Socrates,

which is appropriate only for the
philosopher's62
dealing with the elite, must be

combined with the way of Thrasymachus, which is appropriate for the philoso
pher's62
dealing with the multitude. The first reason why the noble delusion is
required is the tension between the impossibility of a universal political society
on the one hand universal is meant here literally, embracing all human be-
186 Interpretation
ings and the essential defect of the particular or closed political society on the
other. The particular or closed political
society conflicts with the natural frater
nity of all men. Political society in one way or another draws an arbitrary line
between man and man. Political society is essentially exclusive or harsh. The
discussion of justice in the first book of the Republic may be said to culminate
in the suggestion that the just man does do any harm to anyone. Pursuing
not
this line of thought we arrive at the conclusion that justice is universal benefi
cence. But this whole line of thought is dropped silently, yet not unnoticeably,
in Socrates's strong speech on behalf ofjustice. The guardians of the just city
are compared to dogs who are gentle to their acquaintances, or friends, and
harsh to enemies, or strangers. In this way Plato makes his Socrates express the
same view which Xenophon expresses by indicating that he, the pupil of Socra
tes, was as good at guiding gentlemen by praise as he was at beating the base
into obedience. Both the Xenophontic and the Platonic Socrates have under
limitation63
stood the essential of reason and of speech generally, and therewith
the nature of political things.
As I have indicated, the action of the Republic consists in Socrates's first

bringing64
into the open his latent conflict with Thrasymachus, then in his si
lencing Thrasymachus, in reconciling Thrasymachus by assigning to
and finally
him an important, if subordinate, place in the best city. To express it somewhat
differently, the action of the Republic turns around the strength and the weak
ness of rhetoric. We noticed that in the course of the conversation the expecta
tion from rhetoric is greatly increased. To begin with it is only expected that
the people who have already grown up in the best city and have been educated
in its ways will believe in the noble lie. Later on it is expected that the people
of an actual city can be persuaded of the need to submit to the rule of philoso
phers. Only on the basis of this expectation does it make sense to say that evils
will not cease from the city if the philosophers do not become kings. That the
can become kings depends on their
philosophers ability to persuade the multi
tude of their ability to be kings. But at the end of this part of the Republic,
which is its central part, the condition of political bliss is drastically reformu
lated. Political bliss will follow, not if the philosophers become kings, but
when the philosophers have become kings and if they have rusticated everyone
older than ten, and if they bring up the children without any influence whatever
of the parents on the children. Socrates does not even

try to show that the
multitude can ever be persuaded to submit to the rale of the philosophers with
the understanding that the philosophers will expel the multitude from the
city
and keep only the children in the city. The majority of men cannot be brought
by persuasion alone to undergo what they regard as the greatest
misery for the
rest of their days so that all future generations will be blessed. There are abso
lute limits to persuasion, and therefore the best city as sketched in the Republic
is not possible. The best city would be possible if a complete clean could sweep
be made, yet there is always a powerful heritage which cannot be swept away
and whose power can

only be broken by sustained effort of every individual by
himself. The best city would be possible if all men could become philosophers,
that is to say, if
human nature were miraculously transformed.
Now the best city was founded in speech in order to prove the strength of
the Just Speech. Hence it would seem to follow that not only the traditional just
speech,65
but the novel just speech65
as well is weak, or that Aristophanes was
right. The Platonic Socrates provides against this conclusion

by conceiving of
the justice of the city being strictly parallel to the justice of the individual,
as
and vice versa. Accordingly he defines justice as doing one's job, or rather as
doing one's job well. A being is just if all its significant parts do their job well.
In order to be truly just it is not necessary that a man should do well the job
which he would have to fulfill in the perfectly just city. It suffices if the parts
of his do their jobs well, if his reason is in control and his sub-rational
soul
powers obey his reason. But this is strictly possible only in the case of a man
who has cultivated his reason properly, that it is to say, of the philosopher.
Hence the philosopher, and only the philosopher, can be simply just, regardless
of the quality of the city in which he lives, and vice versa, the non-philosopher
will not be simply just regardless of the quality of the city in which he lives.
Socrates speaks less of doing one's job well than simply of doing one's job,
which has a common meaning of minding one's own business, not to be a

busy-body, or to lead life. To lead the just life means to lead a retired
a retired
life, the retired life par excellence, the life of the philosopher. This is the
manifest secret of the Republic. The justice of the individual is said to be
written in small letters, but the justice of the city is in large letters. Justice is
said to consist in minding one's business, that is to say, in not serving others.
Obviously the best city does not serve other cities. It is self-sufficient. Justice is
self-sufficiency, and hence philosophy. Justice thus understood is possible re
gardless of whether the best city is possible or not. Justice thus understood has
the further advantage that the question as to whether it is choiceworthy for its
own sake cannot arise. Whereas justice in the vulgar sense can well be a bur
den, the philosopher's minding his own business, that is to say, his philoso
phizing, is intrinsically pleasant. To exaggerate somewhat for the sake of
clarity, in the best city the is happy, and

whole noindividual is happy, since
the philosophers are burdened with the duties of administration. Outside of the
city the philosophers as philosophers are happy. At this

point we may begin to
understand what the distinction between compulsory and voluntary dialogues

means, and why the Republic is the only dialogue narrated by Socrates which is
compulsory. But all this does not mean more than that the individual is capable
of a perfection of which the city is not capable.
Political life derives its dignity from something which transcends political
life. This essential limitation of the political can be understood in three differ
ent ways. According to Socrates the transpolitical to which the political owes
its dignity is philosophy, or theoria, which, however, is accessible only to what

188 Interpretation
he calls good natures, to human beings who possess a certain natural equip
ment. According to the teaching of revelation the transpolitical is accessible
through faith, which does not depend on specific natural presuppositions, but
on divine grace or God's free election. According to liberalism the transpoliti
cal consists in something which every human being possesses as well as any
other human being. The classic expression of liberal thought is the view that
political society exists above all for the sake of protecting the rights of man, the
rights which every human being possesses regardless of his natural gifts as well
as of his achievements, to say nothing of divine grace. To return to the argu

ment of the Republic, by realizing the essential limitations of the political, one
is indeed liberated from the charms of what we now would call political ideal
ism, or what in the language of Socrates might have to be called the charm of
the idols, the imaginative presentation of justice, with the understanding, how
ever, that it is better not to be bom than never to have felt that charm. (But the
liberation from that charm will not weaken but strengthen the concern for polit
ical life, or political responsibility. Philosophy stands or falls by the city.)
Hence Plato devoted his most extensive work, the Laws, which is the66
political
work of Plato, to politics. And the Laws present the best city which is possible
for beings who are not gods nor sons of gods, whereas the Republic is his
presentation, not of the best city, but, in the guise of such a presentation, his
exposition of the ratio rerum civilium, of the essential character of political
things, as Cicero has wisely said. This being so it is remarkable that the Pla
tonic character who is the chief interlocutor in the Laws is not Socrates. In light
of everything that has been said before, this fact forces us to raise the paradoxi
cal question, is then not Aristophanes 's presentation of Socrates in a decisive
respect confirmed by Plato? This question can be answered without
any para
doxes. The Platonic Socrates, as distinguished from the Aristophanean Socra
tes, is characterized by phronesis, by practical wisdom. He is so far from being
blind to political things that he has realized their essential character, and that he
acts consistently in accordance with this realization.
It is, then, of the essence of political things to be below that perfection of
which the individual is capable. If the perfection of theindividual is the ceiling
which the city never reaches, what is the flooring beneath which the city cannot
fall without becoming inhuman or degraded? The Platonic Socrates begins his
discussion of these minimum requirements when he describes the first city, that
city which Glaucon calls the city of pigs, but which Socrates calls the true city,
the city which is nothing but city. This is a city which does nothing but satisfy
the primary wants, the wants of the body, food, and in
clothing, shelter, and
which nothing good or evil that goes beyond these
elementary things has yet
emerged. It is innocence, which, because it is innocent, is so easily
a state of
lost, a state of dormancy, a state characterized, not by virtue, but by simplicity

or good-naturedness, and by the absence of the need for government. In the
moment the human faculty is developed, the need for government arises,
for, to
The Origins of Political Science 1 89
say the least, there is no necessity whatever that the faculties should develop in
the right direction. The need for government is identical with the need for
restraint and the need for virtue. Virtue thus understood is required for the sake
of living together, the flooring beneath which the city cannot fall without be
coming degraded. It is serious concern for this kind of virtue, called by Plato
We may
virtue.67
popular or political call it utilitarian virtue. Its rationale, or
root, is the need of the city.

Yet there is another root of virtue and hence another kind of virtue, genuine
virtue. The Socratic formula for genuine virtue is, virtue is knowledge. This is
another manifest secret of the Platonic as well as of the Xenophontic Socrates.
The formula means what it says. Virtue in the strict sense is nothing but knowl
edge or understanding, and vice in the strict sense is nothing but ignorance, of
course knowledge or ignorance of the akra physeos, of the peaks of being. This
virtue in the strict sense both presupposes and produces courage, moderation,
and justice, the other virtues. If we may use the Aristotelian term, not Platonic
term, moral virtue, we can state the view of the Platonic Socrates as follows.
The moral virtues have two different roots. The ends for the sake of which they
exist are the city on the one hand and the life of the mind on the other. To the
extent to which the moral virtues are rooted only in the needs of society they
are only popular or political virtues and they are acquired only by habituation.
As such they have no solidity. A man who has lived in
a well-ordered city in
his former life as a good citizen participating in virtue by habituation and not
by philosophy chooses the greatest tyranny for his next life, as Plato states
towards the end of the Republic. Popular or political virtue is acquired by
habituation in accordance with a reasoning or calculation, the starting point of
which is the for society or the needs of the body, whereas the
need philosopher
is inclined to virtue and does not need a calculation for that. In our century
Bergson has spoken of the two roots of morality, one of them being the city,
the other being the open or universal society. What Bergson said about the first
root is in fundamental agreement with the Socratic teaching. All the more strik
ing is the disagreement regarding the second root. The place occupied in Socra
tes's thought by philosophy is occupied in Bergson's thought by the open and
universal society inspired by a kind of mysticism.
Yet if morality has two radically different roots, how can there be a unity of
morality, how can there be a unity of man, and how is it possible that the moral
requirements of society on the one hand and the moral requirements of the life
of the mind on the other agree completely, or at any rate to a considerable
extent? The unity of man consists in the fact that he is that part of the whole
which is open to the whole, or in Platonic language, that part of the whole
which has seen the ideas of all things. Man's concern with his openness to the
whole is the life of the mind. The dualism of being a part, and being open to
the whole, and therefore in a sense being the whole itself, is man. Furthermore,
society, and the whole simply, have this in common, that they are both wholes68
190 Interpretation
inducing69
transcending the individual, the individual to rise above and beyond
himself. All nobility consists in such rising above and beyond oneself, in such
dedicating oneself to something greater than oneself. We shall tentatively say

that the question of the unity of man is discussed in the Republic in the form of
the question of the unity of the human soul. This implies the Republic abstracts
from the body. Every dialogue, I suggest, is characterized by a specific abstrac
tion from something most relevant to the subject matter discussed. The abstrac
tion characteristic of the Republic is the abstraction from the body. The
characteristic political proposal of the Republic is complete communism. But
the body constitutes the absolute limit to communism, and man cannot strictly
speaking share his body with anybody else, whereas he can well share his
thoughts and desires with others. The same abstraction from the body can be
observed in the discussion of the equality of men and women in the Republic,
where the difference between men and women is treated as if it had the same
status and significance as the difference between men who are baldheaded and
men who are not baldheaded. The same intention is revealed by the provisions
of the Republic regarding children. The blood relation between children and
parents, this bodily relation, is to be rendered invisible. Also, and above all,
the argument of the Republic as a whole is based on the parallelism of man, the
individual, and the polis, but this parallelism between man and the polis is soon
replaced by the parallelism between the individual's soul and the polis. The
body is silently dropped. With the same connection belongs Plato's failure to
provide for the dinner promised at the beginning of the conversation. Further
more, we understand from here the fact that Socrates almost forgets to mention
among the studies to be pursued by future philosophers the field of solid geom
etry, geometry of bodies. Last but not least, we mentioned the exaggeration of
the rhetorical power of the philosophers, which is only the reverse side of the
abstraction from the bodily power of the philosophers to force the non-philoso
phers. At any rate, the question of the unity of man is discussed in the Republic
in the form of the question of the unity of the soul. The question arises because
of the evident necessity to admit the essential difference between intelligence or
reason on the one hand and the sub-rational powers of the soul on the other.
The question of the unity of man thus becomes the question of the bond be
tween the highest and the lowest in the human soul.
In the Republic Plato suggests a partition of the soul into three parts, reason,
spiritedness, and desire. Of the two sub-rational parts spiritedness is the high
est, or noblest, because it is essentially obedient to reason, whereas desire
revolts against reason.To use the terms employed by Aristotle in his Politics in
a kindred context, reason rales spiritedness politically or royally,
by persua
sion, whereas it rules desire despotically, by mere command. It appears, then,
that spiritedness is the bond between the highest and the lowest in man, or that
which gives man unity. We shall venture to say that the
characteristically hu
man, the human-all-too-human, is spiritedness. The word which is translated
by spiritedness, thymos or thymoeides, has originally a much broader meaning,
and this meaning occurs also in the Platonic dialogues. We may say that spir
"heart."
itedness is a Greek equivalent of the biblical Especially in the Republic
Plato prefers the narrow meaning by opposing spiritedness and desire, whereas
desire, of course, belongs as much to thymos in the original sense, to the heart,
as does spiritedness. To Plato's preference, especially in the Repub
understand
lic, from the fact that desire includes eros, erotic desire in the highest
we start
and lowest sense. Spiritedness in the sense of the Republic is

radically distin
is70
guished from eros. It anerotic or anti-erotic.
By assigning to spiritedness a higher status than to desire Plato depreciates

eros. This depreciation appears most clearly in two facts. When Plato indicates
in the second book the needs for the satisfaction of which men live in society,
he mentions food and drink but is silent about procreation. When he describes
in the ninth book the tyrant he him
absolutely under the sway of
presents as
eros, as eros incarnate. The tyrant, however, is injustice incarnate, or the incar
nation of that which is destructive of the city. Spiritedness, we should then say,
as opposed to eros, is meant to be the political passion. It is for this reason that
Xenophon presents his Cyrus, the most successful of all rulers, as a thoroughly
unerotic man. Yet how can this be understood? Unerotic spiritedness, the polit
ical passion, shows itself as a desire for victory, superiority, rule, honor, and
the71
glory. But is political passion not also, and even primarily, attachment to
the polis, to the fatherland, and hence love? Is not the model of the guardian,
or the citizen, the dog who loves his acquaintances or friends? But precisely
this model shows that the guardian or citizen must also be harsh on the non-
citizen or stranger. The political passion, then, cannot be understood merely as

attachment. The harsh, exclusive element is equally essential to patriotism.
This harshness is not essential to eros because two human beings can love one
another without being harsh to others. This harshness is not essential to eros,
but is supplied by spiritedness. There remains a greater difficulty. Spiritedness

shows itself asdesire for victory, superiority, rule, honor and glory. Is it then
not also a kind of desire? With what right can it be distinguished from desire,
or even opposed to it? The answer is implied in the traditional distinction be
tween the concupiscible and the irascible, a distinction which is the outgrowth
of the Platonic distinction between desire and spiritedness. But the Platonic
distinction is not identical with the traditional distinction. I have spoken of the
two-fold root of morality, the needs of society,which are ultimately the needs
of the body, and the needs of the mind. To these two kinds of needs there
correspond desires. Desire is directed toward its good, the good
two kinds of
simply, but spiritedness, of which anger is the most obvious form, is directed
towards a goal as difficult to obtain. Spiritedness arises out of the desire proper
resisted or thwarted. Spiritedness is for overcoming the resistance
needed
being
to the satisfaction of the desire. Hence spiritedness is a desire for victory.
Whereas is primarily the desire to generate human beings, spiritedness is

eros
the derivative willingness to kill and to be killed, to destroy human beings.

spiritedness is in the service of
secondary in comparison with desire,
Being
192 Interpretation
desire. It is essentially obedient while looking more masterful than anything

else. But as such it does not know what it should obey, the higher or the lower.
It bows to it knows It divines something higher, it is aidos, rever

not what.
Yet
ence.72
qua essentially deferential it is of higher dignity than the bodily

desires, which lack that deference. The spirited man is, as it were, always on
the look-out, or on the search, for something for which he can sacrifice him
self. He is prepared to sacrifice himself and everything else for anything. He is
as anxious for honoring as he is for being honored. While being most passion
ately concerned with self-assertion, he is at the same time and in the same act
most self-
forgetting. Since spiritedness is undetermined as to the primary end,
the goods of the body or the good of the mind, it is in a way independent of
them, or oblivious . . . (tape being changed) . .
thymos, the word for
spiritedness, thymos does not have this outward pointedness which desire has.
But this is purely etymological speculation, which I mention in passing. As
such, spiritedness is neutral to the difference between the two kinds of objects
of desire, the goods of the body, and the good of the mind. It is therefore
radically ambiguous, and therefore it can be the root of the most radical confu
sion. Spiritedness thus understood is that which makes human beings interest
ing. It is therefore the theme of tragedy. Homer is the father of tragedy because
thwarted1*
his theme in the Iliad is the wrath of Achilles, and in the Odyssey the
return of Odysseus. Spiritedness is the region of ambiguity, a region in which
the lower and the higher are bound together, where the lower is transfigured
into the higher, and vice versa, without a possibility of a clear distinction be
tween the two. It is the locus of morality in the ordinary sense of the term.
Philosophy is not spirited. When joining issue with the atheists in the tenth
book of the Laws, the philosopher addresses them explicitly without spirited
ness. Spiritedness must be subservient to philosophy, whereas desire, eros, in
its highest form is philosophy. Here we touch on the point of the deepest agree
ment between Plato and Aristophanes. As desire for superiority, spiritedness

becomes in the case of sensible men the desire for recognition by free men. It is
therefore essentially related to political liberty, hence to law, and hence to

justice. Similarly, as essentially deferential, it is a sense of shame, which as
such bows primarily to the ancestral, the
primary manifestation of the good.
For both it is essentially related to justice. Spiritedness in its normal
reasons
form is for justice, or moral indignation. This is the reason

a zeal
why spirited
ness is presented as the bond through which man is
one, in Plato's dialogue on
justice, the Republic. And the action of the Republic can be said to consist in
first arousing spiritedness or the virtue belonging to it, that is to say, zeal
dedicated to non-understood justice, that is, what we now
mean by political
idealism, and then in purging it. By understanding spiritedness we understand

the fundamental ambiguity of moral indignation, which
easily turns into vindic-
tiveness or punitiveness. The ambiguity of spiritedness is not exhausted, how

indignation.75
ever, by the ambiguity of moral It shows itself most
strikingly in
the shift from justified indignation to unjustified indignation. No one has stated
this more directly than Shakespeare in Hamlet's soliloquy. Hamlet enumerates
seven things which make life almost impossible to bear. Almost all of them are
objects of moral indignation, the oppressor's wrong, and so on, but in the
center he mentions the pangs of despised love. The justified indignation about
injustice shifts insensibly into the unjustified indignation about unrequited love.
This is perhaps the deepest secret of spiritedness and therefore at least one of
the deepest secrets of Plato's Republic.
The Republic could not show the purification of spiritedness, that purifica
tion which consists in its submission to philosophy, without making spirited
ness the center, the center of man. The world of the Republic is a world of
spiritedness, unpurified and purified. In other words the Republic abstracts
from charis, grace in the classic sense in which it is essentially akin to eros.
The world of spiritedness is not the world of charis or eros. How these two
worlds are related in Plato's view, whether they are not related as charis and
anangke, as grace and compulsion, this question coincides with the question of
the relation between the Republic and the Banquet, between the most com
pulsory and the most voluntary of the Platonic dialogues. But this question
cannot be conveniently discussed today, nor, for that matter, in any lectures
devoted to political science.
(NOVEMBER 7, 1958)
. . from the contemporary collapse of rationalism. This collapse induces us
to consider the whole issue of rationalism. The first step in this inquiry, to the
extent to which it is an empirical inquiry, is the question of the origin of ratio
nalism. For a number of reasons this question can be identified with the prob
lem of Socrates, or the problem of classical political philosophy in general. It is
no doubt of the utmost importance to contrast classical political philosophy

with the philosophic alternatives to it which are presented by modem political
philosophy. But before one can do that one must have understood classical
political philosophy by itself. I limit myself to the question concerning the

character and claim of classical political philosophy, to the question concerning
the problem which it tried to solve, concerning the obstacle it tried to over
come. That problem and that obstacle appeared clearly in Aristophanes 's pre
sentation of Socrates. Socrates is unpolitical because he lacks self-knowledge.
He does not understand the political context within which philosophy exists. He
is unaware of the essential difference between philosophy and the polis. He
does not understand the political in its specific character. The reason for this is
his unerotic and amusic. To this accusation Xenophon and Plato give one
being
and the same reply. Socrates is political and erotic. He understands the political
He realizes the critical importance of thymos, of

in its non-rational character.
194 Interpretation
spiritedness, as the bond between the philosophers and the multitude. He un
derstood the political in its specific character. In fact, no one before him did.
For he was the first to grasp the significance of the idea, of the fact that the
whole is characterized by articulation into classes or kinds, whose character can
be understood only by thought, and not by sense perception. Whatever we may

think of the adequacy of this reply, in one point the reply is manifestly inade
quate. It does not reply to the charge that Socrates was amusic.
According to a wide-spread view, the opposite, or the opponent of classical
political philosophy is sophistry, the teaching and the practice of the Greek
sophists. This view deserves the reputation which it enjoys. A single superficial
reading of the first book of the Republic, of the Gorgias, or of the Protagoras,
is sufficient for producing it. In the nineteenth century this view came to be
understood as follows. Classical political philosophy is related to the sophists
as German idealism, especially Hegel, is to the theorists of the French revolu

tion, and in particular to the French philosophes. Both the adherents and ene
mies of the principles of 1789 have adhered, and still adhere, to this view.
Liberals are inclined to favor the sophists and conservatives are inclined to
favor classical political philosophy. The most up to date and hence most sim
plistic version of this view does no longer assert a merely proportional equality,
but a simple equality. For the view that classical political philosophy is related
to the sophists as German idealism is to the theorists of the French revolution
implied that there is a fundamental difference between all classical thought and
all modem thought, and therefore that there is only an analogy between modem
liberalism and the sophistic doctrines. Now, however, we are told that the
sophists simply were liberals or theorists of democracy. It is necessary to know
this opinion and to examine it carefully, for it embodies the most powerful
obstacle to an understanding of either classical political

philosophy or of the
sophists. But this is not the proper place for such an examination.
Here I limit myself to the following remarks. Plato's criticism of the soph
ists is directed less against the teaching peculiar to the sophists than against a
specific way of life. He had in mind a phenomenon similar to that which is

known to us by the name of the intellectuals, a most ambiguous phenomenon.
For the name intellectual conceals the decisive difference between those who
cultivate their intellect for its own sake, and those who do it for the sake of
gain, power, or prestige. In other words, intellectual is a merely external de

scription, a description good enough perhaps for certain bureaucratic purposes,
say tax declarations. Intellectuals are men who earn their living by writing and
reading, yet by writing

not and reading tax declarations, for example, but
something ill-defined. Intellectuals form a profession, but in all other profes
sions there are standards allowing the profession to distinguish between, say,
physicians and fake physicians. There exists no such
possibility in the profes
sion of intellectuals. One could perhaps say that the profession of intellectuals
is distinguished from all other professions
by the vagueness, as well as the
The Origins of Political Science -
195
enormity, of its claims. Its ambiguity, bom of confusion, increases confusion
and therefore it is a menace not to morality, but to clarity.

To return to the sophists, in the very Republic Plato defends the sophists
against the common charge that they are corruptors of the The young
young.
are corrupted, Plato says, not as the many charge, by the sophists, but by the
many themselves who make that charge, or by the polis as it actually is and
always will be. The sophists are mere imitators of the polis and of the politi
cians. Gorgias and Polus in the Gorgias and Thrasymachus in the Republic are
not sophists but rhetoricians. Classical philosophy is opposed not to

political
another political philosophy, but to rhetoric, that is to say, to autonomous rhet
oric, or to the view that the highest art, the political art, is rhetoric. This view
was indeed based on a philosophy, but on a philosophy which excluded the
possibility of political philosophy. Plato has given a clear sketch of this philos
ophy in the tenth book of the Laws. It started from the premise that the funda
mental phenomena are bodies, whereas soul and mind are merely derivative. It
arrived at the conclusion that justice, or right, is in no way natural or in accor
dance with nature, but is only by virtue of convention or of opinion. Hence in
principle any convention, any opinion, they say today, any value system,
or as
is as good as any other. There is no nature, no truth, in this kind of thing, and
therefore there cannot be a science of these things. The true art or science
dealing with such matters is the art of influencing opinions with a view to one's
interest, that is to say, the art of rhetoric. But in the Republic at any rate Plato
speaks much less emphatically of the enmity between philosophy and rhetoric
than of the enmity between philosophy and poetry. This enmity is so grave
because the poets and not the rhetoricians or the sophists abuse the philosophers
master"
as "bitches barking at their The great alternative to classical political
philosophy is poetry.
Let us state at the outset how in our opinion Plato settles the quarrel between
philosophy and poetry. He emphasizes the need for the noble delusion, he
therewith emphasizes the need for poetry. Philosophy as philosophy is unable
to provide these noble delusions. Philosophy as philosophy is unable to per
suade the non-philosophers or the multitude and to charm them. Philosophy
needs then poetry as its supplement. Philosophy requires a ministerial poetry.
This implies Plato quarrels only with autonomous poetry. If he is to convince
us he must show that nothing which in poetry is lost if poetry is

is admirable
understood as ministerial. In the Republic Plato discusses poetry twice. The
first discussion, in the second and third books, precedes the discussion of phi
losophy. The discussion is in more than one respect prephilosophic. The second
discussion, in the tenth book, follows the discussion of philosophy. The first
discussion takes place between Socrates and Adeimantus, whose characteristic
is moderation or sobriety, not to say austerity, rather than courage and erotic
desire, and who has shown a profound dissatisfaction with what the poets teach
discussion takes between Socrates
regarding justice. The second place and
196 Interpretation
Glaucon, whose characteristic is courage and erotic desire rather than sobriety
or austerity. The second

poetry promises to be infinitely
discussion of more
daring than the first. The prephilosophic discussion of poetry is identical with
the discussion of the education of the non-philosophic soldiers. The first theme
of that discussion is myth, or untrue speeches to be told to children. The
makers of the myth are the poets. The poets are entirely unconcerned with
fit to be told to children, that is to say, to immature

whether their stories are
human beings regardless of their age. The distinction between fit and unfit
stories has therefore to be made by people other than the poets, by the political
authorities, in the best case by the wise founders of the best city. The political
authorities must be concerned with whether the stories are conducive to the
goodness of men and citizens. They are not concerned, it seems, with their
poetic qualities. As regards the poetic qualities the poets are likely to be better
judges than the political authorities. The political authorities must supervise and
censor the poets. In particular they must compel the poets to present the gods in
such a way that the gods can be models of human and civic excellence. The
presentation must be left to the poets. The task imposed on the poets is formi
dable. It suffices to think of Aphrodite as a model of civic excellence, not to
say of a housewife. The founders of the city can down the outline, or the
lay
general principles of what Adeimantus calls theology. Socrates mentions two
such principles. The gods must be presented as the cause only of good and not
of evil. And the gods must be presented as simple, and as never deceiving.
Adeimantus has no difficulty whatever to accept the first proposition, but he is
somewhat perplexed by the second proposition. The reason for this appears
later on in the same context. For it appears that the only noble motive for
deceiving is that implied in the function of ruling. If the gods rule men how can
they avoid the necessity of deceiving men for man's benefit? But the most
striking rale laid down by Socrates is the prohibition against presenting the
terrors of death and the suffering from the loss of a man's dearest. The poets
are not permitted to state in public what they alone can state adequately when
everyone else is made speechless through suffering, grief, or sorrow. They

must writepoetry on the principle that a good man, by virtue of his self-
sufficiency, is not made miserable by the loss of his children, his brothers, or
his friends. The poets may present the lamentations of inferior women and still
more inferior men, so that the best part of the young generation will leam to
despise lamentation.
Autonomous poetry gives expression to the passions by poetically imitating
the passions, it consecrates the passions. The ministerial
poetry on the other
hand helps man in learning to control the passions. It is necessary to consider
this contention also as a reply to Aristophanes. According to Aristophanes the
poets are wise men who as such teach justice. Plato denies that claim.
Poetry
weakens the respect for right in the very act of teaching right. The poets present
with sympathy and force the powers in man which make man act against
right
and against propriety. Appealing to the claim raised by Aristophanes Plato de

mands that the poets be teachers of justice pure and simple, that they do not
give their audience any relief, so to speak, from this salutary teaching. Poets
must be nothing but the severe and austere servants of justice. Plato turns the
tables on Aristophanes; he draws all the conclusions from Aristophanes 's in
dictment of Euripides in the Frogs against Aristophanes. Especially convinc
ing, or amusing, is the critique of comedy as such in the name of the polis, a
critique which occupies the center of the respective discussions. The imitation
of men who ridicule one another and use foul language against one another,
whether they are sober or drank, is not to be permitted in the just city. The
levity fostered by comedy is bound to counteract any lessons of justice which

the comedy may otherwise convey. All the devices of comedy, slander, ob
scenity, blasphemy, and parody, are explicitly or implicitly rejected by Plato.
In spite of or because of all this no doubt is left as to the necessity of poetry.
Yet there is likewise no doubt left, and in fact it is explicitly stated, that the
permitted poetry is rather austere and therefore less delightful than the best
excluded poetry. We are expected to abandon something of great worth for the
sake of justice. What we shall miss is most clearly stated in the discussion
of
the Homeric verse in which Achilles expresses his contempt for his chief, the
king Agamemnon. Hearing such insults of mlers by subjects, Socrates says, "is
not conducive to obedience at any rate". And he adds, "if it yields some other
is
surprising"
pleasure, this would in no way be Now what that other pleasure
appears from a brief consideration of the verse in question, which reads, "You
drunkard, who possess the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer". The pleasure
we derive from hearing this verse is two-fold. In the first place it is a most
perfect insult which can be hurled against a king or a captain. He has the heart
animal;9
of a deer, he thinks only of flight. But a deer is a noble, graceful
therefore he is compared to a dog, to the eyes of a dog, an ignoble, slavish,

back;9
expression. But a dog can attack and fight therefore he is com
crawling
pared to a deer, which can only run away, and so on. It is a perfect circle.
Secondly it is an insult hurled by a noble subject against an unworthy king. It

expresses a noble feeling, the feeling of indignation, about the rule of unworthy
about the oppression of bom rulers by merely factual rulers. Socrates

men,
understandably76
deplores that we should have to miss such gems. We shall
have to miss above all, all tragedy and comedy, for, says Socrates, in the best
to one job, and the dramatic poet
city each man must dedicate himself entirely
people. In
must imitate and hence, in a sense, be many different kinds of
particular no one must and can be both a comic and a tragic poet. This latter
the same Socrates who, when he speaks, not to the puri
point is by
suggested
tan Adeimantus, but to a comic and a tragic poet, compels them to admit that
the good comic poet is also a good tragic poet, and vice versa. It is suggested
this Socrates, who demands that in the just city one kind of man, the
by same
highest kind according to him, must have two jobs, that of the philosopher and
198 Interpretation
that of the administrator, and who demands of all that perform a

other men they
single job, or mind their own business, but urges the comic
poets77
"not to mind
business, but to be to see that

serious."
their We are therefore not surprised
Socrates leaves an opening for another discussion, for a completely different

discussion of poetry by saying, "We must obey our present argument until
The necessity for

argument."
someone persuades us by another, more beautiful,

such a re-opening of the discussion appears from the simple consideration that
one cannot teach control of the passions if one does not know the passions, and
one cannot convince other people of one's knowing the passions unless one is
able to present, to imitate, or to express, the passions. In accordance with this
Plato himself imitates the passions; even the meanest capacities can see this in
the78
case of Plato's presentation of Thrasymachus's anger in the first book of
the Republic. Plato's deed contradicts his speech, or rather, it contradicts the
speech of his Socrates, or to be still more precise, it contradicts the speech of
Plato's Adeimantus. We are, then, in need of another argument, a more beauti
ful argument, regarding poetry. The first step in that argument is dictated by
the most obvious flaw of the first argument, of the first round as it were, in the
contest between Plato and the poets. In the first argument we were not told
what poetry is. The crucial question, what is, was not even raised regarding
poetry. Poetry came to sight as the making of myths, or untrue tales about
gods, demons, heroes, and the things in Hades. As such, poetry was subjected
to political control, to pruning in the name of justice or morality. Henceforth
poetry must tell edifying stories rather than charming stories. But in the course
of the argument it became unclear whether the canons with which poetry must
comply in presenting the gods and the things in Hades consist of untrue or of
true opinions about the gods and the things in Hades.
One cannot leave it, then,
at considering poetry from the point of view of the city, or of morality. The
ultimate judgment on morality will depend on how
poetry is related to truth.
The first discussion of poetry takes place at the earliest possible moment in
the founding of the best city. The second, and in a sense final, discussion of
poetry takes place after the completion of the political part of the Republic. For
the political part of the Republic is not concluded, as some people seem to
think, somewhere in the fifth book when the subject of

philosophy comes to the
fore. The discussion of philosophy in the Republic is a part of the political
argument. Philosophy is introduced in the Republic as a mere means for estab
lishing the good city. Hence Aristotle, the most competent interpreter of Plato
that ever was, does not even refer to the rale of the philosophers in his sum
mary and criticism of the Republic. The political part of the Republic ends at
the end of the ninth book. At that place it has become perfectly clear that the
best city as described before is not only impossible, but in a sense, even irrele
vant. It makes no difference, Socrates says there, whether the best city, or
justice presented in speech, exists, or will exist, on earth or in heaven, for it is
certain that it can exist within the soul of the individual.
The great question which must still be settled concerns the possible rewards
for justice and punishments for injustice, either during life or after death. The
final discussion poetry introduces the discussion
of of the rewards for justice
and the punishment for injustice. At the beginning of the final discussion of
poetry Socrates says that the necessity of rejecting especially dramatic poetry
has in the meantime become so much clearer, for in the meantime the differ
ence between the various kinds or forms of the soul has been brought out. By
this he does not merely mean the exposition regarding the tripartite division of
the soul into the reasoning, the spirited, and the desiring part. He means also,
and above all, the various forms of badness of the soul, the timocratic, oligar
chic, democratic, and tyrannical forms which had been discussed in the eighth
and ninth books. Only after the philosophic analysis of both goodness and
badness of final discussion of poetry take
the soul has been completed can the
place. For poetry is79 concerned with the goodness and badness of the soul as
much as is philosophy. Only now, in the second and final discussion of poetry,
does Socrates raise the question, what is, regarding poetry, or more precisely,
regarding imitation. Imitation, we leam, is the production of appearances
which look like the original but are not the original. For example, a painted bed
is not a bed in which one can sleep, like the bed made by the carpenter. Yet
even the bed made by the carpenter is not the tme bed. The true bed is the idea
of the bed, the model with a view to which the carpenter makes visible and
tangible beds. There are, then, three beds, the true bed, the bed in nature,
which is made by god; the visible bed made by the carpenter; and the painted
bed made by the painter. The painter does not reproduce the true proportions of
the bed; he reproduces the bed as it appears perspectively. He imitates not the
visible bed, but the phantasm of the bed. Imitation is then the reproduction of
something which is at the third remove from nature or truth. It is the imitation
of a phantasm of something which in its turn is modeled after the truth, or in
imitation of the truth. Now in order to imitate the phantasm, the mere appear
ance, one does not have to know the original, the thing itself, truth. The poet,
for example, who presents a general does not know the general in his general
ship. He does not possess the art of the general.
Up to this point the poet is compared by Socrates to other makers or pro
ducers. Hence the relation of the poet to the philosopher remains obscure. Soc
rates replaces therefore the triad of makers, god, carpenter, painter, by the
triad, user of the bed, carpenter, painter, and contends, generalizing from this,
that the only one who possesses genuine knowledge, that is to say, the only one
who can judge things from the point of view of goodness is a user, the man
who does not make or produce at all. poetry is at the third

Hence we conclude
remove, not only from the truth, but from philosophy as well. The
common
craftsmen are superior in wisdom and understanding to the poets, or to quote
from the Phaedrus, "Even the lovers of bodily toil or of gymnastic training are
by far superior to the poets, for they are not concerned with mere phantasms at
200 Interpretation
any rate, that is to say with merely imagined

things."80
What does this extreme
and absurd description and denigration of

poetry signify? It cannot be simply
absurd, for the men who listen to Socrates, or answer his somewhat leading
questions, were as intelligent as I or most of you, and not one of them protests.
Philosophy, it appears, is concerned with nature, that is to say, with the forms,
or the ideas. Poetry, however, is said to imitate artifacts. Even the ideas are
here presented as artifacts. The very summit and cause of the world of poetry,
the ideas, consists of artifacts. For the poets do not possess knowledge of the
nature of things. They imitate only opinions. They imitate opinions

especially
regarding virtue, or they imitate phantasms of virtue, and therefore also opin
ions about and phantasms of the divine. They imitate the human things as they
appear in the light of opinion, of authoritative opinion. Or, to use a Platonic
image, poetry lives in the world of artificiality because it entirely belongs to the
cave, to the city. Poetry praises and blames what the city, what society, praises
or blames. The city praises and blames what it has been taught to praise and
blame by its legislator or founder. The legislator laid down the moral order of
the city by looking at the idea of justice, just as a carpenter makes a bed by
looking with his mind's eye at the model of a bed. The poet remains within the
boundaries drawn by the legislator. He therefore imitates the legislator, who in
his turn imitates in some way or another the idea of justice.
Nietzsche has unwittingly given a perfect interpretation of what
perhaps
Plato conveys. The artists, Nietzsche says, have at all times been the valets of a
morality or a religion. But, as Nietzsche knew, for a valet there is no hero. If
the poets are the valets of a morality, they are in the best position to know the
defects which their master conceals in public and in daytime. The poets, that is
to say, the decent ones among them, come indeed to sight as valets of the
morality to which they are subject. In truth, however, they are the severest
critics of any established morality or any established order. When Plato criti
cizes in the tenth book of the Republic the poets as imitators of imitators, he
criticizes the poets as he had constituted them, as he himself had made them in
his first critique of poetry in the second and third book of the Republic. For
there he had subjected the poets to the city and its order against the nature of
poetry. After he has completed the political part of the Republic, he takes away
the last remaining part of the scaffolding by letting us divine the nature of
poetry.
This interpretation of the teaching of the Republic regarding poetry is con

firmed by the teaching conveyed through Plato's Laws. In the thematic discus
sion of poetry in the second book of the Republic it is made clear that
poetry is
necessarily subject to political or moral control. The legislator must persuade or
compel the poets to present good men, to teach that only the good
only are
happy, and only the bad are miserable. But in the Laws where an old Athenian
tries to convince an old Spartan and an old Cretan of the desirable character of
wine drinking it is made clearer than in the Republic that morality is not the
only criterion with which

poetry must comply. There are standards of poetic
excellence which must also be considered. Grace or pleasure in their way are as
important as morality, and of this element the poets themselves are the best
judges. That is to say, Plato did not favor ill written pious tracts. The relation
between legislator and poet is entirely reversed, however, in a later discussion
in the Laws, in the fourth book, where the problem of legislation in the strict
and narrow sense comes to the fore. The first question here is, how should the
legislator state his laws? Should he state them simply as mere commands, rely
ing entirely on compulsion and force, or should he state the law doubly, that is
to say, both as mere commands and justifying them by a prooemium or a
prelude which persuades men of the wisdom of the laws? The double statement
is much to be preferred. Yet this doubleness or duplicity is not sufficient, for

the audience to be persuaded is not homogeneous or uniform. Very roughly,
every audience consists of an intelligent and81
an unintelligent part. The prelude
to the law must therefore fulfill a dual function. It must persuade the intelligent
on the one hand and the unintelligent on the other. Yet intelligent people are
sometimes persuaded by different arguments than unintelligent people, and the
difference may very well go so far as to become a contradiction. The author of
a prelude must then be a man of great versatility and flexibility. He must be a

man who has learned to speak differently to different kinds of people and who
shows his competence in this respect by his ability to make different kinds of
people speak differently. This man cannot be the legislator as legislator, for the
province of the legislator is simple and unambiguous speech, saying the same
thing to all.
Who then is the man who can write the proper prelude? Plato introduces the
discussion of preludes by making his spokesman address the legislator "on be
poets."
half of the He refers first to the ancient myth according to which the
poets speak through inspiration and hence do not know what they say. But then
he say that the irrationality of the poet consists, not in ignorance of
goes on to
what he says, but in self-contradiction. Since the poet imitates human beings,
he creates characters of contradictory moods who contradict one another, and in

this way in this way 82he contradicts himself without knowing which of the
contradictory statements is tme and which is false. The philosopher goes on to
identify himself with the poet. The poet does not truly contradict himself. He
speaks ambiguously by impersonating contradictory characters, so that one can
not know which, if any, of the characters through which he speaks comes
closest to what he thinks. The legislator on the other hand must speak unam
biguously and simply. But this is no easy matter. The legislator wishes, for
example, that funerals be moderate, but what is a moderate

funeral depends
verymuch on the means of the people to be buried, whether they are rich or
poor or of moderate means. Each station has its peculiar dignity. No one appre
ciates that peculiar dignity better than the poet, who can praise with equal
the tomb of excessive grandeur, the simple tomb, and the modestly
felicity
202 Interpretation
adorned tomb because the poet knows best and interprets best the moods of the
rich, the poor, and the inbetween people. If the legislator wishes then to legis
late intelligently on human things he must understand the human things, and he
is helped in acquiring that understanding by sitting at the feet of the poets, for
the poets, we may add, understand the human things not only as they appear in
the light of the law, or established morality, but as they are in themselves. The
poet rather than the legislator knows men's souls. Since it is the poet who
teaches the legislator, the poet is so far from being the valet of a theology or of
a morality that he is rather the creator of them. According to Herodotus, Homer

and Hesiod created what we would call Greek religion. Plato has expressed this
thought as clearly as he could in his simile of the cave. The cave-dwellers, that
is to say, we humans, see nothing, that is to say, nothing higher, than shadows
of artifacts, especially of reproductions of men and other living beings moving
around on high. We do not see the human beings who make and carry these
artifacts. But as is shown clearly by Plato's demand for the noble delusion, he
himself is far from disapproving altogether of the poet's activity. In principle
the poets do exactly the same thing as Plato himself.

The discussion of poetry in the Laws leads us to realize that according to
Plato the poets possess genuine knowledge of the soul, and therefore that po
etry is psychohgia kai psychagogia, understanding of the soul and guiding of

the soul, just as philosophy more precisely, just as Platonic philosophy
itself,
itself, for not
every philosophy is psychology in the Platonic sense. The neces
sary although not sufficient condition for philosophy being psychology in the
Platonic sense is that the soul is not regarded as derivative from body or as
secondary in relation to the body. A materialistic philosophy is indeed radically

different from poetry. It would need poetry, understanding of the life of the
soul as we know it as human beings, only in the form of a dubious sentimental
supplement. We see this clearly today when poetry appears as the only refuge
from apsychology and a

sociology which are unable to articulate human life in
its fullness and depth because they are constitutionally ignorant of the differ
ence between the noble and the base, for that
are83
psychology and that sociology

of materialistic origin. Platonic on the other hand, which regards
philosophy
the soul as the primary phenomenon and the body as derivative, has the same
subject matter as poetry. This cannot be literally tme of course, for philosophy
is concerned with the whole, with all things, and not everything is soul, the
soul of man. Philosophy is necessarily also concerned with that which is not
soul, with body and number and the relation of the soul to these other things.
But Plato characteristically entrusts the treatment of that other to the
thing
stranger Timaeus, who presents cosmology, a mathematical physics, as a likely
tale. The core, or the arche, the initiating principle of Platonic philosophy is
the doctrine of the soul, and this core, or arche, is identical with the theme of
poetry. Yet is it not obvious that even Platonic philosophy treats its subject in
entirely different than does The poet sets forth his vision of
poetry?84
an manner
the soul, he does not try to prove that vision or to refute alternative visions. His
organ is a vision with the mind's eye, nous, not reasoning,
logismos. Therefore
poetry expresses itself in poems, epic, dramatic, or lyric, whereas
philosophy
expresses itself in treatises. In the treatise proper names do not occur except
"impersonal."
accidentally. Treatises are
They are not lifeless, but what lives in
them, or whatdies in them, what undergoes various kinds of fate in treatises is
not human beings but logoi, assertions with their
accompanying reasoning.
Plato refers frequently to this life and fate of the logoi most clearly perhaps in
the Phaedo, where Socrates expresses the fear that his logoi, let us
say his
assertions, might die, that is to say, prove to be refutable. Yet the primary
theme of the Phaedo is not the death of Socrates's logoi but the death of Socra
tes himself. More generally stated, it is not true that Platonic philosophy ex
presses itself in the form of treatises. Platonic philosophy is incompatible with
the form of the treatise. It expresses itself in the form of the dialogue, of a kind
of drama, imitation. Not only is the subject matter of poetry the same as that
of
of the fundamental part of Platonic philosophy, likewise the treatment is funda

mentally of the same character in both cases. Neither the Platonic dialogue nor
the poetic work is autonomous, both are ministerial, both serve to lead men to
the understanding of the human soul.
But is this not a preposterous assertion? Did we not admit that the poet sets
human85
forth his vision of the soul without supporting reasoning and without
refuting alternative visions, whereas Plato does nothing, so to speak, except to
present his supporting reasoning and to refute alternative visions? Homer's vi
strikingly differs, so it seems, from Dante's, and both

poets'
sion of the soul
visions strikingly differ again from Shakespeare's. The very question as to
which vision is the most adequate cannot be raised, let alone answered, in the
element of poetry. However, the reasoning is in Plato's dialogues integrated
into the human drama. The reasoning is frequently, not to say always, faulty,
deliberately faulty, as it should be within an imitation of human life. And on
the other hand with what right can one say that Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer
were not able to support their visions of the human soul by reasoning? They did
not set forth that reasoning, surely. Nor did Plato. Plato indicates that Homer's
poems contain hidden, unexpressed thoughts. These thoughts include Homer's
reasoning. Furthermore, we must say that every human phenomenon has its
two sides, a poetic and a non-poetic side. For example, love has its poetic and
its medical side. Philosophy alone will consider both. But this is obviously not
true. Think of the way in which Goethe presented in the Faust the two sides of
love by contrasting Faust's and Mephistopheles's remarks on Faust's love for
Gretchen. Poetry does justice to the two sides of life by splitting itself, as it
were, into tragedy and comedy, and precisely Plato says that the tme poet is
both a tragic and a comic poet. Finally, philosophy is said to appeal only to our
passion,86
understanding, not to our whereas poetry works primarily on our

passion.86
This would be true if philosophy were entirely like

a science mathe-
204 Interpretation
matics. But philosophy in the Platonic sense is a solution and in fact the solu
tion to the human problem, the problem of happiness. Philosophy is therefore
not merely a teaching, but a way of life. Therefore the presentation of philoso
phy is meant to affect and in fact affects our whole being, just as poetry and
perhaps more than poetry. In the words of Plato, "We ourselves to the best of
our power are the authors of the tragedy which is at once the fairest and the
best."
Is there then no difference between Platonic philosophy and po

whatever
etry, or rather between the Platonic dialogue and other poetry? Other poetry, or
what we ordinarily mean by poetry simply, does not imitate, Plato says in the
tenth book of the Republic, the sensible and quiet or reposed character, but it
prefers the multicolored and complicated characters which as such are more
interesting and therefore the natural themes of poetry. The theme of poetry is
not the simply good man or the good life. But is there a simply good man? Will
the good man not feel grief at the loss of his son, for instance? Will he not be
torn between his grief and his duty and hence be two-fold and not simple?
Socrates says, "When left alone I believe he will dare to utter many things
which he would be ashamed of if another would hear them, and he will do
doing."
many things which he would not consent to have another see him That
which the good man cannot help feeling, but which he conceals from others, is
the major theme of poetry. Poetry expresses with adequacy and with propriety
what the non-poet cannot express adequately and with propriety. Poetry legit
imately brings to light what the law forbids to bring to light. Poetry alone gives
us relief from our deepest suffering just as it deepens our happiness. Yet we
must understand the expression, the good man, not only in the common sense
but also and above all in the Platonic sense. Virtue is knowledge. The good
man in the Platonic sense is the philosopher. It goes without saying that the
philosopher is not an individual like myself or like other professors of political
philosophy or of philosophy tout court or tout long.

Plato means then by saying that poetry does not present the good man and
the good life that poetry does not present the philosopher, the thinker and the
life of thought. I quote from the Phaedrus, "The
superheavenly place has not
here,"
yet been be properly praised by any of the poets
praised and will never
that is to say, by any of the poets in the ordinary and narrow sense. But is not
the poet too a thinker? And does not poetry present also the poet as poet, for
example Hesiod in his Works and Days, Dante, and Shakespeare in his Tem
pest, to say nothing of Aristophanes. Still, it is not essential to poetry that it

should present the poet. And while Plato presents the life of thought in order to
instill his readers with love of the life of thought, or to call them to the philo
sophic life, poetry does not present
poetry in order to induce its hearers to
become themselves poets. But be this as it may, poetry as poetry presents men
inferior to the philosopher and ways of life inferior to the philosophic life.
Poetry presents ways of life characterized by a fundamental choice which ex-
eludes87
philosophy as the solution to the human problem, the problem of hap

For according to Plato as well
piness. as to Aristotle, to the extent to which the
human problem cannot be solved by it be
political means
only by can solved
philosophy, by and through the way of life. Plato too presents men
philosophic
who are not good or who are then bad, but he does this only to present all the
more clearly the character of the good men, and this is his chief theme. Poetry,
however, presents only such human beings for whom the philosophic life is not
a possibility. From Plato's point of view the life which is not philosophic is
eitherobviously incapable of solving the human problem or else it does solve
the human problem in a wholly inadequate or in an absurd manner. In the first

case it is the theme of tragedy. In the second case it is a theme of comedy.
From here may we understand why it is according to nature that philosophy
delegate to poetry a ministerial function, a function philosophy itself
which
cannot fulfill. Poetry presents human life as human life appears if it is not seen
to be directed toward philosophy. Autonomous poetry presents non-philosophic
life as autonomous. Yet by articulating the cardinal problem of human life as it
comes to sight within life, poetry prepares for the philo
the non-philosophic
sophic life. legitimate only as ministerial to the Platonic dialogue
Poetry is
which in its turn is ministerial to the life of understanding. Autonomous poetry
is blind in the decisive respect. It lives in the element of imagination and of
passion, of passionate images, of passion expressing itself in images which
arouse passion and yet modify passion. It ennobles passion and purifies pas
sion. But autonomous poetry does not know the end for the sake of which the
purification of passion is required.
NOTES
"are" is"
1. substituted by editors for "that this of the ms.
"observations" reasons"
2. substituted by editors for "of the of the ms.

worn"
"warm"
3. substituted by editors for "well of the ms. See Aristotle, Politics 1267b26.
"thought" "though"
4. substituted by editors for of the ms.

"not"
5. inserted by hand above the line.
"thought"
"thoughts"
of"
7. The words "science which is said to have rendered possible this control have been added
hand bottom of the page, with an asterisk above the line indicating their proper place in
by at the
the text.
"every"
"ever"
9. Semicolon substituted by editors for comma of the ms.
hand the line.

general"
10. "in inserted by above
the line.
"an"
11. inserted by hand above
"reflection"
inserted hand the line.
12. by above
"the"
13. The word after "of has been removed by the editors.
"product"
"project"
for of the ms.
14. substituted by editors
"who"
15. added by editors.

"friends"
"friend's"
for of the ms.
16. substituted by editors
"as"
17.
"at"
substituted by editors for of the ms.
206 Interpretation
18. The words "ascends to the highest

height,"
have been added by the editors to remedy an
apparent lacuna in the ms., though there is no visible sign of anything being missing.
"but" "ridiculous"
19. The word after has been removed by the editors.
"Peace" "Bees"
by"
21. "is achieved by
substituted editors for "the chief of the ms.
"a" "the"
"four"
23. inserted by hand to fill a lacuna in the ms.

"this" "is"
"become" "became"
Peisthetaerus"
26. "the pederast inserted by hand at the end of the paragraph.
27. This sentence has been inserted by hand at the end of the paragraph.
"in" "on"

"by" "prompted"

"that" "the"
"this" "his"
"they" "the"
"not"
33. This word has been crossed out by hand in the ms. and the words "themselves do
not" gods"
have been inserted by hand after the following words "what the
"the" "Either"
"as" "is"
35. substituted by for
editors of the ms.
"Clouds" "gods"
36. inserted by hand above the line to replace which has been crossed out.
"seems" "seem"

"to" "effect"
"complete" "compete"
"its" "it"
40. by editors for
substituted of the ms.
"that" "hat"
"between" "in"

"takes" "take"
the" The"
44. "Xenophon, substituted by editors for "Xenophon. of the ms.
"which"

"are" "is"

"to" "with"

"to" "not"
"places" "place"
"word" "words"

"I" "I'll"

"with"
52. substituted by editors for "of of the ms.
53. The words "originator of have been added by the editors to fill a lacuna in the ms., which
has room for some words that are impossible to read.

"most"
"gentleman" "gentleman's"
"in" "on"
56. by editors for
57. Comma added by editors.
"he" "has"
59. The words "or more generally stated, in identifying the existing social hierarchy" have
been added by hand at the bottom of the page, with an asterisk above the
line their indicating
proper place in the text.
60. Dash substituted by editors for comma of the ms.
"
61. (unclear) is what appears here in the ms.
"philosopher's"
"philosophers"
"limitation"
"imitation"
"bringing" "bring"
"speech"
65. inserted by hand line. Also, the

above the previous word was
"ice" originally written as
"justice", but the final has been crossed out by hand.
"the"
66. The word has been underlined by the editors.
67. There seems to be a lacuna at the end of this sentence in the ms., though there is no visible
sign of anything being missing.
"wholes" "whole"

"inducing"
69.
using"
substituted by editors for "in of the ms.

"an" "is"
"the" "a"

"reverence" "reverent"

" "
73. (tape being changed) is what appears here in the ms. In the omitted section,
Professor Strauss was probably speaking of desire, or epithymia as contrasted with spiritedness, or
thymos.
"thwarted"
74. The word has been underlined by the editors.
75. The words "which easily turns into vindictiveness or punitiveness. The ambiguity of spir
indignation."
itedness is not exhausted, however, by the ambiguity of moral have been added by
hand at the bottom of the page, with an asterisk above the line indicating their proper place in the
text.
"understandably" "understandingly"

"poets" "poet,"

"the"
78. added by editors.
"as" "is"

"things"
80. The word (followed by a period and a quotation mark) has been added by hand at
the end of the line.

"and" "or"
81. by editors for
82. Dashes substituted by editors for commas of the ms.

"are" "is"
84. Question mark substituted by editors for period of the ms.

"human"
"passions," "s"
86. The manuscript has with the final crossed out by hand.
"excludes" "excluded"

Descartes Contra Averroes?
The Problem of Faith and Reason in the Letter of
Dedication to the Meditations
Abraham Anderson
University of New Mexico
Descartes' Meditations?'
What is the purpose of Is it a Christian work, or at
any rate a work written in support of Christianity? Or is its intention rather to

Descartes'
justify the new science, and assertion of submission and devotion to

the Church a piece of hypocrisy? Even if that claim is not a mere piece of
hypocrisy, is the Meditations nevertheless primarily an attempt to make Carte

Descartes'
sian science theologically respectable? Or (a third possibility) does
treatment of natural theology and of the relation between soul and body have
some other and perhaps more philosophical intention, so that it is neither
merely Christian apologetics nor simply a means of making the new science
acceptable to the Church? To answer this question, it may be useful to consider
the letter of dedication with which Descartes introduces the Meditations, and
which is directed to the Dean and Doctors of Theology of the Sorbonne. In this
theologians'
letter, Descartes asks the support for his enterprise. So righteous is

the cause which impels him to offer his work to them, he says and he is
confident that they too will regard it as so righteous as to take up its defense,
once they have understood the plan of his undertaking that "there is here no
better means of commending it than to state briefly what I have sought to

work."
achieve in this
First, Descartes states that it is with the aid of philosophy, rather than of
theology, that the questions of God and of the soul should be demonstrated. For
although it suffices for believers to believe on the basis of faith, "no unbeliever
seems capable of being persuaded of any religion or even any moral

virtue,
unless these two are first proven to him by natural reason. And since in this life
there are often more rewards for vices than for virtues, few would prefer what
afterlife."
is right to what is useful, if they neither feared God nor hoped for an
Descartes'
reason for "demonstrating the
questions"2
of God and the soul, in
other words the reason which the theologians will regard as so righteous that
is human beings be that
up its defense
take political: must persuaded
they will
there is a God and an afterlife so that they will observe moral virtue, or abstain
from crime.
Descartes reiterates, is a sufficient basis of belief for believers; God's

Faith,

210 Interpretation
existence is to be believed in because Scripture testifies to it, and Scripture is to

be believed because God is its source. But unbelievers would take this proof to
be a circle.
In saying this Descartes seems to be speaking from a sense that the attempt
to prove the existence of God is a problematical business, which needs justi
fication before the authorities and perhaps the people. For really, from the point
of view of the theologians, one ought to believe (or at least laymen ought to
believe) simply on the basis of authority. But unfortunately, he seems to imply,

it is not possible to found religion only on faith or on authority, for there are
some who will not be convinced by authority.
Thusafter first giving us a political reason for proving the existence of
God it is necessary to sustain religion so as to prevent crime and perhaps

disobedience generally Descartes here gives us a logical reason why unbe
lievers must be addressed through reason: they are not subject to the intellectual
authority of religion. That, of course, is why they must be persuaded.
But the religious authorities have a difficulty when confronted by the unbe
lievers; properly speaking, their authority should be founded on faith it is

authorities'
only faith which licenses the ability to threaten and demand obe
dience. But the necessity of persuading the unbelievers requires that the Church
seek to found faith on reason. But to found faith on reason is to subvert the
primacy of faith, to grant a kind of recognition and intellectual authority to

unbelief, for one who believes only on the basis of reason cannot be said to be
subject to the authority of faith, or the authority licensed by faith; he continues
"unbeliever"
to be an insofar as his assent to the existence of God is not
founded on belief but on reason or knowledge.
The Church, we might put it, would prefer an assent founded on the will, on
It is only such an assent that satisfies the
authority.3
unreasoned submission to
political aim of securing obedience to law; for someone who believes only
insofar as his reason tells him to, will not be morally or politically obedient
simply because of the dictates of authority He will not be afraid of God,
either.
since his assent God will

not be based on fear and trembling,
to the existence of
but free reasoning; the God to whose existence he assents will be the conclu
on
sion of his own process of

reasoning rather than a being who overwhelms his
independent use of his reason and direction of his will.
In fact this preference of the Church's is actually embodied in philosophical
doctrine or at least in philosophical tendency, in the attraction of important

sections of the French Church, in the sixteenth and into the seventeenth centu
ries, to skepticism. Many theologians, and particularly many Jesuits, found it

useful to attack human reason, in matters of moral theology, of scriptural inter
pretation, of natural theology, and in general, with a view to the
encouraging
submission of human reason to the authority of the Church and of the Catholic
State. In the case of many of the relevant thinkers it is possible to doubt the
sincerity of their religious belief, and possible to interpret them as
regarding
Descartes Contra Averroes? -211
religion not just as without cognitive content, but as important above all as a
political device and a support for moral and political authority: a matter for the
temple, and not for the schools, as Hume's Philo was to put it. These skeptical
views never, of course, supplanted Thomist scholasticism, or its Augustinian
rivals, among the theologians of the Sorbonne, but they, and those who held
Descartes'
them, were important elements on the scene, and in particular for
Beralle.4
early admirer, the Cardinal And of course Descartes had been familiar
with such skeptical views from the time of his education with the Jesuits at La
Fleche. His own account of faith and its relation to reason and to institutions in
the beginning of the Discourse is filled with echoes of the views of the skep
tics, of Montaigne, and perhaps of other politique authors, views adapted by

Descartes'
skeptical Counter-Reformers to their own purposes (as account of
the morale provisoire and his remarks on custom are much colored by the
skeptical [Academic] notion of the probable, a notion with a great deal of
Descartes'
influence on Jesuit moral theology and dogmatics). Some of most
determined critics were to be skeptical Jesuits or other skeptical allies of abso

Gassendi.5
lutist order, like
Still, the Church is compelled to permit demonstrations with regard to God
and the soul, because otherwise there will beway no of persuading the unbe
lievers; the unbelievers, that is, give Descartes license for the public exercise of
reason on these subjects.
And truly I have noticed that you, along with all other theologians, affirm not
only that the existence of God can be proven by natural reason, but also that one
may infer from the Holy Scriptures that the knowledge of him is so much easier
than the manifold knowledge that we have of created things, and is so utterly easy
that those without this knowledge are worthy of blame. For this is clear from
Wisdom, Chapter 13 where it is said: "They are not to be excused, for if their
capacity for knowing were so great that they could appraise the world, how is it
easily?"
that they did not find the Lord of it even more And in Romans, Chapter 1,
it is said that they are "without excuse". And again in the same text we seem to be
warned by these words: "What is known of God is manifest in them": everything
that can be known about God can be made manifest by reason drawn from a source
none other than our own mind. For this reason I have not thought it unbecoming
for me to inquire how it is that this is the case, and by what path God may be
world.6
known more easily and with greater certainty than the things of this
The theologians affirm that the existence of God can be proven by natural
Descartes does not that they prove that the existence of God can be
reason. say
reason, nor that they prove the existence of God. Does faith
proven by natural
require one to believe that it is possible to prove the existence of God by

reason?7
Descartes himself tells us in the following paragraph that the Lateran
Leo X, in Session 8, condemned those who hold that "hu

Council held under
man convinces them that the soul dies with the body and that the
reasoning
Christian
alone,"
philoso-
contrary to be held
on faith and "explicitly enjoined
212 Interpretation
phers to refute their arguments and to use all their abilities to make the truth
known,"
which seems to make it an article of faith that the immortality of the
soul can be shown by human reason, or at least that human reason does not
it.8
oppose
The difficulty with such declarations, of course, is that they emphasize the
very problem they are meant to solve. If it is necessary to make it an article of

faith that there exists a rational proof of the existence of God, that suggests that
the existence of such a proof is not very obvious or very easy to demonstrate.
For if it were obvious, or easy to demonstrate, that there is
proof, why such a
not simply do so, rather than make it an article of faith that it is possible to do
so? The latter proceeding is especially odd when no example of a valid proof is
provided, although of course it is the very fact that the validity of the existing
proofs is subject to dispute, even among the most orthodox, which made it
necessary to make it a dogma that there was such a proof.
This dogma has another aspect to it, however: it points to the distinction
made by the Counter-Reformation Catholic Church between laymen and
priests, especially theologians, in their epistemic relation to religion. Priests,

and more particularly theologians, were charged with using their reason to
combat unbelief and heresy; they therefore had license to consider arguments
for and against all the dogmas of the faith, including the existence of God.
Laymen were on the whole discouraged from prying too deeply into these mat
ters even from reading the Scriptures without permission. Their faith was to
be founded on submission to authority.
The theologians affirm not only that the existence of God can be proven by
natural reason, but also that one can infer from Holy Scriptures that the knowl
edge of him is much easier than the manifold knowledge we have of created
things. That is, they make it an article of faith that reason allows us to infer
from revelation that the rational knowledge of God is easier than the knowledge
of created things; they declare, by their authority, that reason, reflecting on the
writings which they hold to be authoritative, can infer from those writings that
those writings declare, by divine authority, that reason can more
easily know
God than created things.
This is an odd and paradoxical
nesting of assertions. Here the capacity of
reason to know God is made a matter of faith and authority, and what is more,
of a second-order sort of authority.

Authority has to declare that reason can
infer from authority that reason can know God. Here is further license for
Descartes to offer his demonstrations, but also further demonstration of the
embarrassing and paradoxical situation authority finds itself in when it tries to
found itself through an appeal to reason, or to make reason a guarantor for
authority.
The knowledge of God is utterly easy that those without this knowledge
so
are worthy of blame, the theologians say. And indeed, how could one blame
anyone for doubting the dogmas the Church unless

of they were obviously true?
It is not clear that our assent is subject to our will, and yet, if the knowledge of
God is so easy, if God's existence is so obvious, why blame those who do not
perceive it? Surely they deserve pity and instruction rather than blame.
But this alternative places the Church in a cleft stick, for
Christianity as an
established Church and perhaps any human society, but established Chris
tianity ina particularly marked way depends on being able to require human
beings to believe certain things, to hold them as tme, on its being possible to be
angry with them for not doing so. But how can one be angry with someone for
making a mistake in reasoning, or for not perceiving something?
The authority of the Church, in other words, depends on certain things being
discemably obviously true, and in order to maintain this authority, the
and
Church has to be able to demand that people hold these things true. But if it has
to demand that people hold these things true, then surely they are not obviously
true.
The tension this difficulty points towards is a tension within the nature of
opinion itself, as Socrates often indicated. On the one hand, opinion claims the
status of truth, and thereby exposes itself to the demand for justification; on the
other hand, opinion claims the status of the obvious, and must therefore repel
the demand for justification on the grounds that it subverts that claim. Further,
opinion claims the status of the obligatory, since it founds and is necessary to
moral obligation; but how can assent to a theoretical proposition be obligatory?
To suppose that it is is to suppose that the tme is reducible to the just; but it is
not just to suppose this because it is not true.
"'What is known in God is manifest in them': everything that can be known

about God can be made manifest by reason drawn from a source none other
mind."
than our own Descartes takes this assertion from Romans as a license
for assuming that the knowledge of God is founded simply in our own minds,
or in the knowledge of our own minds, and not in that of outer things; "For this
reason I have not thought it unbecoming for me to inquire how it is that this is
the case, and by what path God may be known more easily and with greater
The meaning of the assertion that God
sense."
certainty than the things of outer

is manifest is itself manifest; Descartes takes license from its mysterious-
not
ness to seek for a way in which God many be known more easily than outer
this will require him to attack common sense, and the certainty of the
things;
things of common sense.
the passage from Romans against the
In so doing, he is surely playing off
passage from Wisdom; for if according to Wisdom "the knowledge of him is
things,"
knowledge we have of created this is

much easier than the manifold
of his works refer us to their maker without

presumably because the
wonders
to those works; our wonder at the world, in fact, natu

our having understand
it, and may perhaps be diminished by our

rally precedes our understanding of
214 Interpretation
understanding of it. Descartes, in rendering doubtful the existence of outer

things, will also be subverting the movement by which common sense arrives
God.9
at
And many have regarded its nature as incapable

as to the soul: although of easy
inquiry, and some have far

gone so
as to say that human reasoning convinces them
that the soul dies with the body, and that the contrary is to be held on faith alone;
nevertheless, because the Lateran Council under Leo X, in Session 8, condemned

these people and explicitly enjoined Christian philosophers to refute their arguments
and to use all their abilities to make the truth known, I too have not hesitated to go
forward with this.
What does Descartes mean? Would he not have dared to attempt to refute
the arguments of the Averroists if the Lateran Council had not enjoined Chris
tian philosophers to do so? Would he otherwise have accepted the assertion that
the nature of the soul is not capable of easy inquiry, or that human reasoning
shows that the soul dies with the body? When he says that "some have gone so
say"
far as to the latter, whereas he had only

that many have held the
said
former, does he mean daring thing they

that the have done is not to think that
the soul is mortal, but to say it? Does he mean, in other words, that while it is
not surprising that someone would hold that human reasoning shows that the
soul is mortal, it is audacious to say it? If so, what is his own view? Insofar as
(according to his own declaration) he only dares to reject the assertion that
human reason shows that the soul is mortal, and that only faith requires us to
believe it immortal, because of a decision of a Council, does he not accept and
implicitly confirm the doctrine he is undertaking to refute? In other words, is
not he himself saying that, while human reason would have led him to regard
the soul as mortal, or not to dare to answer those who say this, faith, which
asserts that the soul is immortal, requires him to use reason to show that this is
so?
The confusing nature of the latter possibility reveals the confusing situation
in the Church finds itself when it is compelled to rely on faith to ground
which
the assertion that reason, and not merely faith, licenses the assertion that the
soul is immortal.
"Moreover, I know that there are many irreligious people who refuse to
believe that God exists and that the soul is distinct from the body, for no other
reason than that they say that these two doctrines have up to this time not been
be
anybody"
able to proved by (AT 3). Irreligion, like the religion propagated

by the Council, is founded on beliefor opinion; in the case of
irreligion, on the
opinion that nobody has advanced a proof. These "many irreligious
seem to be distinct from those people, referred to in the
preceding paragraph,
who claim that human reason shows that the soul dies with the
body, and that
the contrary is to be held by faith alone. The latter people are not moved
by
opinion or report about what others have proven, but by their own reason-
and
Descartes Contra Averroes? 215
"irreligious."
they are not said to be Even those who say that they are con
vinced by human reason that the soul does not survive the body, and that the
contrary is to be held on faith alone, do not perhaps go so far as to say that they
reject faith and adhere to their own convictions;
they are reasonable enough to
bow to the proclamation of the Council that the soul is immortal, even if they
do not say that reason convinces them of this.
The task which these irreligious people set the philosopher is not that of
proving that God exists, but of setting forth arguments for God's existence and
the distinction between soul and body in such a light that they will believe that
someone has demonstrated these things. In other words, the task they set him is
one of managing opinion or belief about the accomplishments of reason.
Descartes believes that he has provided the best possible proofs, "so that I
demonstrations"
now dare to propose these as most certain and evident (AT 4).
"But although I believe my arguments to be certain and obvious, still I am not
therefore convinced that they have been accommodated to everyone's power of

apprehension."
As in geometry, proofs that are obvious and certain in them

selves may not be so to everyone, "both because they are quite lengthy, one
thing depending on another, and also because they particularly demand a mind
quite free from prejudices a mind that can easily withdraw itself from com
senses."
merce with the

Descartes'
This seems like a stiff requirement; proofs, which are supposed
to sway the opinion of those who believe no one has offered adequate proofs as
well as to convince the unbelievers who rely on reason, can only be appre
hended by a mind both attentive and capable of seeing the things of the intel
lect.
Certainly one is less apt to find people competent to study metaphysics than to
study geometry. Moreover, there is a difference that in geometry everyone is

convinced that nothing is customarily written without there being a certain
demonstration for it, so that the inexperienced err on the side of assenting to what
is false, wanting as they do to give the appearance of understanding it, more often
than of denying what is true. But it is the reverse in philosophy: since nothing is
believed concerning which there cannot be a dispute regarding at least one part,
few look for truth, and many more, eager to have a reputation for profundity, dare
to challenge whatever is the best. 10
have faith in
Descartes'
There is thus a problem about proofs: people do not
such proofs, and are more afraid to appear foolish for accepting than for deny
ing them.
And therefore, however forceful my proofs might be, nevertheless because they
I have through them will
belong to philosophy I do not expect what accomplished
be very significant unless you assist me with your patronage. I do not doubt, I ...
if this should come to pass, all the errors that have ever been entertained
say, that
216 Interpretation
regarding these questions will in a short time be erased from the minds of men. For
the truth itself easily brings it about that the remaining men of intelligence and
learning subscribe to your judgment; and your authority will bring it about that the
atheists, who are more accustomed to being dilettantes than brilliant or learned
men, shall put aside their spirit of contrariness, and also that perhaps they will
defend the arguments which they will know are taken to be demonstrations by men
of intelligence, lest they seem not to understand them. And finally, all the others
will easily believe in so many testimonies, and there will be no one who would
dare call into doubt either the existence of God or the real distinction of the soul
from the body. Just how great the usefulness of this thing is, you yourselves can
best of all be the judge, in virtue of your singular wisdom; nor does it behoove me
to commend the cause of God and religion to you at any greater length, you who
Church"
have always been the greatest pillar of the Catholic (AT 5-6).
Descartes'
The force of proofs will not accomplish much unless assisted by
the prestige of the Sorbonne, whose support will lead men to believe that the
proofs are valid. If it does, "all the errors that have ever been entertained
regarding these questions will in a short time be erased from the minds of
men."
But the sort of errors in question are not errors of reason, but errors at
the level of opinion; for the effect of the Sorbonne's support will not be to
make the proofs more perspicuous to those capable of evaluating them who
are fewer than those competent at geometry but to make those incapable of
doing this, and accustomed to accepting the judgment of others, believe that the
proofs are valid. And it is, indeed, of errors of opinion, rather than of errors of
reason, that it is most appropriate to say that they will be "erased from the
minds of men"; for the errors of reason are not erased from the minds of those
who reason, but only resolved; one who reasons must remember, understand,
and meditate on the errors of reason, insofar as there can be such things. The
"erased,"
errors of opinion, on the other hand, are the sort of thing that can be
for these errors are merely impressions, habits, or remembered strings of
"erased"
words; these can be in the measure that new opinions can be im

planted in men's
souls."
"The truth easily brings it about that the remaining men of intelligence and
judgment"
authority subscribe to your that is, presumably, the unbelievers, or

those of them who are competent to evaluate the arguments; and
along with
"intelligent"
them, those who are in a political, rather than speculative sense

and those who are men of authority rather than, or as well as, men of intel
ligence and who follow the Sorbonne for political reasons. "Your authority
will bring it about that the atheists, who are more accustomed to being dilet
tantes than brilliant or learned men, shall put aside their spirit of contrariness,
and also that perhaps they will defend the arguments which
they will know are
taken to be demonstrations by men of intelligence, lest they seem not to under
them."12
stand "They will put aside their spirit of contrariness": that
is, they
will become politically submissive. Will they do this because, like Naude or La
Mothe le Vayer, they believe in the

necessity of political and theological decep
tion on the part of the authorities, out of a Machiavellian pleasure in
being
among the knowing liars? "And finally, all the others will easily believe in so
many testimonies, and there will be no one who would dare call into doubt
body."
either the existence of God or the real distinction of the soul from the
Descartes'
The result of collaboration, in other words, will be a success, not
with regard to the thoughts of those who reason, but with regard to what men
say,"
Descartes'
"dare to which of course is precisely the starting point for
project, since it inspired
say"
was by those who "dare to that human reason
convinces them that the soul depends on the body, and that the opposite is to be
held by faith alone a daring which was condemned by the Lateran Council.
"Just how great the usefulness of this thing is, you yourselves can best of all
wisdom." "usefulness"
be the judge, in virtue of your singular The of a situa
tion in which no one dares call into question the dogmas of the Church; what
can that be but a political usefulness, of the sort Descartes spoke of at the
beginning of the Letter? The theologians of the Sorbonne can "best of all be the
judge"
of such a usefulness, "in virtue of your singular wisdom": a political
wisdom? It is surely political wisdom that is the judge of political usefulness.

"Nor does it behoove me to commend the cause of God and religion to you at
any greater length, you who have always been the greatest pillar of the Catholic
Church"
Church": who more than a "pillar of the Catholic would more clearly
see the usefulness of conserving the authority of the Catholic Church?
This question is perhaps not merely ironical. It can be taken as involving an
allusion to what I have spoken of earlier, the view defended or implied by

skeptical Counter-Reformer and politique authors, that religious belief, at least
that of the many, is without cognitive content, or is simply an act of the will,
and that this sort of faith is necessary for political reasons, to prevent the anar
chy promised by the Protestant assertion of the right to examine the truths of
theology by the light of individual reason.
It is not at all clear that Descartes rejects this

claim,13
and much that he says
in the Discourse seems to confirm that he shares the view of popular religion or
belief as a matter of custom, without cognitive content ("above reason"), whose
chief importance is political, but which is, politically, quite important, although
it is not so clear from the Discourse that he wishes simply to retain the existing
theology, since the best commonwealths are those governed by a single plan
and religion is an essential part of commonwealths. In the Discourse he seems
and therefore perhaps the

to give up the idea of reforming the commonwealth
of difficulty and risk, not because it would not be

religion simply on grounds
desirable to do these
things.14
I have suggested that he may be undertaking to
founding what one might call the

encouraging imitation
and
do indirectly, by
religion of science and the society associated with it, what he does not do
overtly and explicitly.
It is thus not clear that Descartes simply rejects the skepticism either of
218 Interpretation
Montaigne or of skeptical Counter-Reformers about popular religion or the pos
sibility of founding political order in reason or theological truth; indeed, it

could be argued that skepticism will be of considerable importance for Des
cartes beyond its bearing on religion and popular opinion, in informing his
departure from Averroism,
cosmos.15
with its Aristotelian-Platonic view of the
NOTES
1 . A full consideration of the relation between faith and reason in the Meditations would have
to consider many things besides the Letter of Dedication, in particular, the discussions of faith in
the Replies to the Second Set of Objections AT 142-43 and 147-49, as well as many other
passages in the Replies to Objections. (AT numbers refer to the page on which a passage occurs in
Descartes'
the Adam and Tannery edition of works.) A full consideration of the relation between
faith and reason in Descartes would require careful attention to the Discourse on Method as a whole
as well as to the Principles and the correspondence. The purpose of this paper is not to provide a
comprehensive discussion of this sort, but merely to open the question.
2. A striking turn of phrase. What is it to demonstrate a question except perhaps to demon
strate that there is a question, to display a difficulty?
3. It is this preference that especially characterized the Catholic Church, in the view of Prot
estant theologians, in contrast to their own; and it is because Descartes treated faith as a mere
matter of will, rather than as a product of understanding illuminated by grace, that Voetius accused
him of being a friend of the Jesuits and an enemy of ecclesiastical and political liberty. The view of
faith as unreasoning submission was of course allied to the Jesuit conception of Church government
as the spiritual rule of the priesthood (and of Catholic monarchs) over the laity. (That is why the
Jesuits, as I observe below, were particularly attracted to philosophical skepticism: they thought it
served their conception of religion as a matter of rule by priests.) A Protestant, and especially a
Calvinist necessarily depended for its unity on the educated consensus of

church the faithful in a
sound understanding of doctrine and Scripture. For the clash between Descartes and Voetius see
Universities"
Thomas J. McGahagan, "Cartesianism in the Dutch Ph.D. dissertation, Department
"Voetius."
of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1976, index under I thank Ernestine van der
Wall for making me aware of this work.
4. On Jesuits and skepticism, see Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus
to Spinoza (Berkeley: University California Press, 1979), index under Huet, Maldonat, etc.;
of
Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections, translated by Richard H. Popkin (Indi
anapolis: Hackett, 1991), index under Arriaga, etc. On Berulle's response to skepticism see Pop
kin, pp. 175-76.
5. See Pascal's in the Provincial Letters, passim, on the Jesuit rule of the
attack in
"probable"
moral theology. See also Descartes, letter to Mersenne, 5 October 1637, ATI 450: "I consider
almost as false whatever is only a matter of probability"; compare Rules for the Direction of the
Descartes'
Mind, Rule Two. Consider in the light of this remark at Discourse AT45 that it is far
more probable that the world was created as the Bible says than as the method tells us; compare
Letter to Mersenne, End May 1637, AT1367 (beginning of page). Faith belongs to the level of the
probable, from the point of view of human reason; that is, not to the level of clear and distinct
Descartes'
ideas. Consider following remark for the light it sheds on the question of whether he
was a Christian or a believer.
Descartes'
the court Christina, Gabriel Naude, "libertin
erudit"
rival at of was a allied with the

skeptic La Mothe le Vayer as well as with Gassendi. Naude's philosophical thought is absolutist
Machiavellian political doctrine rather than epistemological skepticism, but his of politi
advocacy
cal lying seems to presuppose a radical criticism of the truth-claims of religion, a criticism which
could find support in skepticism even if not skeptical itself. La Mothe is generally supposed to have
shared Naude's political views and intentions.
Descartes'
Compare remark on the circularity of which the unbelievers would accuse the faith
ful if they were simply to defend belief in God from Scripture, and Scripture from belief in God,
with Montaigne's famous remarks about the circle of judgment in the "Apologie de Raimond
Sebond."
6. ATVII p. 2. Quoted from the translation of Donald A. Cress from Descartes, Meditations on
First Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979), in Steven M. Cahn, editor, Classics of

as reprinted
Western Philosophy, 3d ed., (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990), p. 405. The use of Cress's translation
does not express a dislike of the Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch edition, on which I have
relied for my references to the correspondence and Rules in note 3 and for the quotation from the
Rules in 9, below (The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by John Cottingham,
note
Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985]).
7. That the existence of God can be proved by natural reason
was not clearly announced as
dogma, to judge from Denzinger, until the nineteenth century (though as Descartes points out in the
Letter it seems to be asserted by Romans and Wisdom): see nos. 2751, 3004, and other passages
dei"
cited as relevant to "Exsistentia in the index. See Henricus Denzinger, Adolfus Schoenmetzer
S. I., Enchiridion Symbolorum, 32d ed. (Barcelona: Herder, 1963).
8. See Denzinger, no. 1440, and for the full text, Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, Cen
tre di Documentazione Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, Bologna (Basel: Herder, 1962).
9. See Averroes, The Decisive Treatise, where he seeks to defend the philosophical study of
nature through the injunction to praise the Lord for his works, thereby indicating the tension be
tween the pious attitude, which has an immediate experience of the Deity through the wonder at his
creation, and the philosophical or scientific attitude, which knows God not through humble wonder
at the marvels of creation, whose nature and possibility surpasses our understanding, but through
the understanding of those works, an enterprise which implies the overcoming of the submission
which is a natural companion to pious wonder and reverence.
To the in this paragraph, compare the remark by Pamphilus in the introduction

earlier remarks
to Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: "Any point of doctrine which is so obvious that
it scarcely admits of dispute, but at the same time so important that it cannot be too often incul
cated, seems to require some such method of handling it; where the novelty of the manner may
compensate the triteness of the subject, where the vivacity of conversation may enforce the precept,
and where the variety of lights, presented by various personages and characters, may appear neither
tedious nor redundant.
"Any question of philosophy, on the other hand, which is so obscure and uncertain that human
reason can reach no fixed determination with regard to it if it should be treated at all seems to
lead us naturally into the style of dialogue and conversation. Reasonable men may be allowed to
differ where no one can reasonably be positive: Opposite sentiments, even without any decision,
afford an agreeable amusement; and if the subject be curious and interesting, the book carries us, in
a manner, into company, and unites the two greatest and purest pleasures of human life study and
society.
"Happily, these circumstances are all to be found in the subject of natural religion. What truth
so obvious, so certain, as the being of a God, which the most ignorant ages have acknowledged,
for which the most refined geniuses have ambitiously striven to produce new proofs and argu
introduction by
ments?"
See David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited, with an
Norman Kemp Smith (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1947), pp. 127-28.
"dare"
the
comparing the different occurrences of the verb
10. AT 5. It would be worth in
"presumption"
Letter. be the different occurrences of in the Dis

They might also compared with
course, and with the first sentence of that work which comes from Montaigne's "De la presomp-
See also Rules, Rule Two, AT363: "Therefore, concerning all such matters of probable
tion."
presumptuous to hope that

opinion we can, I think, acquire no perfect knowledge, for it would be
achieve"
we could gain more knowledge than others have managed to (Cottingham, Stoothoff, and
Murdoch translation, vol. 1, p. 11).
11 of Republic 429d-e on true opinion as a sort of dye which can be

Compare the language
made to One is tempted to ask, what are the errors in question? Are they the
color men's souls.
opinions the Sorbonne opposes, or

the ones it supports? If the Sorbonne supports Descartes, will it
220 Interpretation
gainvictory for the opinions it supports, or will it be accepting a Trojan horse? See Replies to the
Second Set of Objections to the Meditations, AT 142-43 and 147-49; compare letter to Mersenne,
End May 1637, cited in n. 5.
12. Implied in this passage, as the reader will have noticed, as well as in the rest of the Letter
of Dedication, is the view that there are three sorts of minds. There are those who are capable of
thinking things out for themselves and who are unwilling to accept the truth of philosophical
assertions on the basis of appeals to authority. This class is referred to when Descartes speaks of
that small number who are capable of

following proofs in metaphysics, when he speaks of the
unbelievers, and when he speaks of the wise. There are those who are concerned with their reputa
tion for wisdom. This class is referred to when Descartes speaks of the atheists and libertines, and
may also include the theologians to whom he speaks in an apparently flattering manner. There are
also those who go along with what others believe, or what authority tells them.
The view that humanity breaks down into these three orders of men seems to correspond rather
well to the Averroist grouping of human beings into philosophers, prophets and other men who
make use of their imaginations to gain authority among others, and believers. Further, it clearly
corresponds to the distinction Descartes makes in Discourse Part Two, AT 15-16, between three
sorts of minds. The world, he says there, "is largely composed of two sorts of minds for whom [the
doubt] is quite unsuitable. First, there are those who, believing themselves cleverer than they are,
cannot avoid precipitate judgements and never have the patience to direct all their thoughts in an
orderly manner; consequently, if they once took the liberty of doubting the principles they accepted
and of straying from the common path, they could never stick to the track that must be taken as a
short-cut, and they would remain lost all their lives. Secondly, there are those who have enough
reason or modesty to recognize that they are less capable of distinguishing the true from the false
than certain others by whom they can be taught; such people should be content to follow the
opinions of these others rather than seek better opinions themselves.
"For myself, I would undoubtedly have been counted among the latter if I had had only one
teacher or if I had never known the differences that have always existed among the opinions of the
learned"
most (Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch translation).
The third class, that is, consists of those who are capable of thinking for themselves or who are
compelled to attempt this by their discovery of the actual incompetence or lack of

unanimity of
(Descartes'
their teachers. assertion that he would have been among the mere followers had he not
been exposed to disagreements among the learned can be taken both as an ironical gesture of
deference to the Jesuit principle that laymen ought not to engage in theological speculation, and as
an indication that his departure from this principle derived from his own education at the hands of
the Jesuits.)
This typology is of course far older than Averroes. One finds a typology related to it in Plato's
Apology, where Socrates distinguishes three types: the poets, politicians, and Sophists, who think
that they know a great deal about many things, but who in fact know nothing; the craftsmen, who
do know something about their craft but suppose that they know more than they do in knowing this;
and himself, who alone knows that he knows nothing. Here the craftsmen,
which is to say the men
of the people, are not praised for their modesty and submission to the authority of religious teachers
and custom, as those who follow the opinions of others are praised by Descartes. But that there is a
Socrates'
Descartes'
close relation between poets, politicians, and Sophists, and class of those who
think they are cleverer than they are, seems clear enough (see also Discourse Part One AT 9 and
passim). And there is much in the Apology to imply that Socrates thinks that the craftsman class is
characterized by its conventionality or acceptance of tradition. For
moral and religious
Descartes'
agreement with Socrates that craftsmen know more than those with more elevated claims to wis
dom, see AT 9-10 together with AT 5-9.

13. Certainly he accepts the view that faith is a matter of the will rather than of the intellect;
see e.g. Rule Three AT 370, Principles I, No. 76, Letter to Father Dinet, AT 598, etc. As to the
political indispensability of preserving established beliefs, consider Discourse Part
Two, AT 14-
15, as well as Part Three AT 24 and Part Two AT 12.
14. See Discourse Part Two, AT 24: "For these reasons I thought I would be
sinning against
good sense if I were to take my previous approval of something as obliging me to regard it as good
later on, when it had perhaps ceased to be I longer it

such."
good or no regarded as This seems to

Descartes'
suggest that
country"
adherence to Christianity
among the "laws and customs of my
as one
(AT 23), an adherence which is "morale"
merely provisional insofar as it is part of a that

is merely provisional, may have to be abrogated if he finds that this custom has ceased to be good
or that he no longer regards it as such. The suggestion is confirmed
by AT 27-28: "Besides, the
sole basis of the
foregoing three maxims [which include the maxim of obedience to and Christianity
other "laws and customs"] was the plan I had to continue my self-instruction. For since God has
given each of us a light to distinguish truth from falsehood, I should not have thought myself
obliged to rest content with the opinions of others for a single moment if I had not intended in due
course to examine them using my own judgement; and I could not have avoided having scruples
about following these opinions, if I had not hoped to lose
opportunity to discover better ones, in
no
case there were any. Lastly, I could not have limited my desires, or been happy, had I not been
following a path by which I thought I was sure to acquire all the knowledge of which I was capable
reach"
and in this way all the true goods within my (Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch transla
tion). Note the anti-ascetic implications of the last remark.
15. Epicureanism too may have been important for him. Cyrano de Bergerac goes so far as to
call Descartes an Epicurean, adding that he differed from other Epicureans because he had the
vanity to wish to give to Epicureanism a new founding principle. See Cyrano de Bergerac, Les
Oeuvres Libertines de Cyrano de Bergerac, Parisien (1619-1655), introduction by Frederic La-
chevre (Geneva: Slabkin Reprints, 1968), vol. 1, Les Estats et Empires du Soleil, p. 184.
Moby -Dick and Melville's Quarrel with America
John Alvis
University of Dallas
Melville works out his thoughts on America's political character in his fifth
novel, White-Jacket and in his sixth, Moby-Dick. The latter meditation is re
lated to the former as antithesis to thesis; a hopeful confidence in his country's
national purpose gives way to skeptical reflections on a dilemma inseparable
from those founding principles that for Melville had once promised an enlight
ened and morally improved public life. In Moby -Dick Melville confronts a ten
sion between the substantive and formal principles of the American regime,
between a conception of the maintenance of human rights founded in nature,
the nation's final cause, and the formal requirement of sovereignty, the demo
cratic imperative of popular consent. The problem I suppose Melville to have
puzzled over in the course of producing his nearest approach to a masterwork is
this: How other than by appeal to Christian tradition does modem democracy
produce needful restraints upon democratic will?
To see why one can speak of needful restraints on a popular sovereign it is

pertinent to appreciate Melville's radicalizing of the political issue as he passed
from White-Jacket to Moby-Dick. Both novels acquaint us with the mechanisms
that sustain despotism aboard an American ship. Yet the specific difference
points to an enlargement of subject. The military despotism Melville anato
mizes in White-Jacket is circumscribed and remediable by act of Congress,

directives. Troubles on the Neversink amount to an
possibly even by executive
excrescence upon an American body politic which, as such bodies go, Melville
exposes bad military
essentially healthy. The
seems to consider earlier novel
usages on the assumption informed citizenry will

that an not give
evidently
their consent to unnecessarily harsh navy discipline once they know of these
thanks to the Earhart Foundation

for the grant which supported my research in preparing
My
this article.

224 Interpretation
With despotism over the

abuses. Moby-Dick, however, we are presented with a
spirit that relies on the consent of the very men whose lives, liberty, and pursuit
of happiness will be sacrificed to the will of their leader. By thus raising the
stakes the later novel calls attention to a conflict of principle latent within that
Lockian-Jeffersonian political creed to which the youthful narrator of White-
Jacket had his hope

redemption.1
attached of world
Locke is mentioned by name in the chapter (79) that recounts Stubb and
Flask killing a Right whale, then attaching its head to the Pequod's hull so as to
balance a Sperm whale's head already depending from the opposite side. The
whaleman's practice inspires Ishmael with an academic plan to balance Kantian
with Lockian Ishmael evidently has in mind the Locke of the

philosophy. Essay
Concerning Human Understanding with its materialist skepticism that might
balance Kantian idealism. But Melville may have also been aware that Locke's
skeptical epistemology subserves a revolutionary political teaching. His con-
tractarian theory rejects the assumption of ancient and Christian political philos
ophy that government ought to aim at forming the moral character of

citizens.
Locke's explanation of the origins and nature of civil society rests solely upon
self-interested material calculation. Lockian rights reduce at bottom to civil
guarantees for freedoms conducive to self-preservation. Government no longer

rests on a claim to divine favor or on the natural superiority of virtue but upon
the consent of the governed. That consent depends in turn upon the individual's
estimate of what he will need to preserve his life and property against a hostile
nature and hostile men. Yet it is quite conceivable that to subdue stepdame
nature one might it necessary to animate men with a

think collective zeal that
would make them indifferent to safeguarding the freedom of their neighbors.
Locke's doctrine of consent promotes a tension within the secular, democratic
regime, a conflict of purposes which Melville examines through his portrayal of
Ahab's rale over the Pequod.
By depicting Ahab's successful subjugation of a crew among whom we find

representatives of the nation's religious heritage as well as an Ishmael widely
read in the philosophic tradition, Melville dramatizes a problem implicit in that
founding creed which rests upon Jefferson's espousal of Locke's doctrine of
consent. Whereas for the Melville White-Jacket Lockian reasoning mediated

of
through the Declaration of Independence provides adequate political guidance,

the Melville of Moby -Dick discerns in Jefferson's two arch-principles of in
alienable rights and consent an unresolved tension: legitimate government rests
upon the consent of the governed, its formal principle, and secures rights, its
substantive principle. Yet what if the formal and substantive principles should
prove to be Cannot the majority consent to laws that infringe rights of

at odds?
the minority or of individuals? Jefferson certainly thought so in his first inau

gural address when he warned that Americans should "bear in mind this sacred
principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will
reasonable."
to be rightful must be The same difficulty beset Locke, who had

Moby-Dick and Melville's Quarrel with America 225
grounded his doctrine of the contractual origin of civil upon the neces
society
sity of protecting rights, but had subsequently stipulated sovereignty for the
majority without
indicating how democratic majorities could be relied upon to
respect the rights of man. Melville perceived lying at the heart of American
democracy this dilemma of reconciling evidently necessary democratic means
to more evidently obligatory moral ends. Moreover, Moby-Dick throws another
shadow over the sunny political messianism voiced in White-Jacket. By the

time he completed his greater work, Melville seems to have become aware of
the despotic potential implicit in the Lockian concept of society as an engine
for overcoming nature's scarcity and violence.

To appreciate the scope of the Lockian issues implicit in the novel we
should begin by noting how Melville works up emotions more proper to heroic
Advocate,"
epics than to modem prose fiction. In the chapter "The Ishmael
exhorts readers to agree with him that the commercial-manufacturing enterprise
he details merits literary treatment traditionally reserved for loftier subjects. At
times the claim is put forward facetiously, Perseus and Vishnoo as archetypal
harpooners and so forth. Plot and incident, however, establish heroic creden
tials for the seamen. Resembling armies on campaign, whalemen leave home
and family for lengthy intervals of hardship and strenuous action. If hunting
ordinary whales exposes men to risks nearly comparable with hazards of war
fare, an antagonist equipped with the white whale's cunning malignancy justi
fies the heroic terms Ishmael adopts when he refers to the ship's mates and
their harpoon bearers as knights and squires. Furthermore, slaughtering whales
requires virtues of leadership in addition to feats of individual courage and

prowess. The whale killer needs to make sure of loyal subordinates, just as
Beowulf had to secure the assistance of his comitatus following. Ahab, conse
quently, like the classical and Renaissance epic heroes Melville mentions in his
novels and poems, must fulfill an administrative as well as a combatant's role.
Even so, the opportunities whaling affords for depicting quest, combat and
leadership do not reassure the narrator he will accomplish heroic amplitude by
incorporating these vivid activities. When Ishmael complains,
be in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies,

Oh, Ahab! what shall grand
featured in the
air2
unbodied
and dived for in the deep, and
we hear Melville's own exertion to elevate mundane material. The material
have been precisely because Melville has

refractory than it
seems more need
chosen to present a documentary on whaling as industry rather than focussing

solely on its adventurous aspects. He makes Ishmael complain of a difficulty he
appears in large part to have brought on himself by insisting on minute descrip
tions of provisioning the ship, rendering

blubber, and cleaning up. If only artis
impelled him, Melville could avail himself of a poet's liberty
tic considerations
business and to confine his attention to exciting chases with their

to ignore ship
psychological and metaphysical soundings. Who faults Homer for
attendant
226 Interpretation
withholding details ofAchaean sumptering and latrine? Yet probably Melville

makes much of overcoming the inertia of his materials because his theme is the
straggle of a commercial society to escape routine, illiberal drudgery wherein
the terms of life are set by the balance sheet.

Putting aside Southern slaveholders, the nineteenth-century Americans toiled
for their livelihood, and, if they cultivated aristocratic virtues relating to war,
command, sanctity, literature or other liberal arts, they did so in the course of
gainful employment. So in this novel set at midcentury, Bohemian Ishmael and
Faustian Ahab have no choice but to earn their daily bread, whatever their
"Socratic"
eccentric aspirations. (Ishmael's epithet) cannot indulge a
Queequeg
Socratic leissure except during the few days he decides to spend awaiting
death. Nineteenth-century authors had to write for cash, as the hard-pressed
author of South Sea literary vendibles attests in his letters. We observe Melville
turning an apparent literary liability into an asset by taking as his subject the
effort his narrator shares with Ahab of sublimating an economic activity, trans
forming commercial necessities into spirit-challenging undertakings.

If one identifies this subject with capitalism, one construes it too narrowly.
A more uncompromisingly capitalist management of the Pequod would have

avoided its catastrophe. No capitalist at all attentive to his interests would pur
sue a particular Sperm whale. On such grounds Starbuck challenges Ahab's

fidelity his contract, "How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee
to . .
(36. 163). New England's whaling industry seems, moreover, to operate on the
principle of employee profit-sharing (granted labor's share is as small as the
market permits). Melville does brood over the absence of moral restraint in a
society avid for new technologies to multiply securities and material gratifica
tion, but he seems indifferent to whether the means of production be in private
hands or collectively owned. Instead, the issue for him is whether an under
standing of political obligations

resting upon no other basis than calculations of
partnership in acquisition, self-preservation, and mutual security will suffice to

secure political justice and freedom.
Ill
Melville may find himself balked before the task of inventing the American
epic because he senses that assumptions apparently necessary for an audience's
reception of the kind of heroism proper to epic poetry ran counter to American
beliefs. Such misgiving seems warranted if we consider the distance between
traditional views of the grounds for civil society, on the one
hand, and, on the
other, the predominantly modem liberal democratic perspective adopted in the
Declaration of Independence. The argument of the Declaration rests partly
some say it rests altogether on a modem version of the contractarian
theory
of civil society elaborated by Locke in his Second Treatise. A brief reflection
on Locke's thought will display its nonheroic tendency.
Locke hypothesized a state of nature prior to any civil order and

existing
characterized by such equality that no man was subject to the will of any other.
Aboriginal men produced civil government with its laws in order to escape the
inconveniences of their primal atomistic condition. They desired to make them
selves more secure
by
protecting themselves against the depredations of stron
ger individuals, but they also needed to find means of cooperating in order to
wrest a more certain and more abundant livelihood from natural resources. Free
and equal individuals thus banded together
surrendered to a commonly ac
knowledged authority some of their primordial liberty for the sake of enjoying
greater security for themselves and their property. According to Locke's view,
therefore, organized society exists because it offers a good bargain for other
wise vulnerable individuals. The bargain consists in their retaining as much of
the original freedom and equality as they deem compatible with their safety and
comfort.
Locke's balance sheet of revenue and costs looks to self-preservation
through generating and protecting property. One's allegiance to the civil order
is, and ought to be, utilitarian in outlook, provisional in temper. Tendering

one's liberties to the community, one expects something in return, and, if re
turns are not forthcoming, one's contribution will not continue willingly to be
made. The bond between individual person and state is calculated and selfish,
or, at any rate, self-interested, rather than reverential or self-forgetful. Thinkers
who commend these arrangements call them enlightened and argue that govern
ment becomes more responsible once everyone has been brought to think mlers
have no claim to divine authority and must earn respect by convincing the
governed of their having provided safety and comfort.
Whether refreshingly enlightened or discouragingly low-minded,

regarded as
we may deduce that once Lockian teaching on the relatedness of the individual
to society has come to prevail, prospects for heroic literature memorializing

national founders turn doubtful. First, what should an epic poet find to cele
brate in nations that think of themselves merely as markets dealing in personal
security? Insurance brokers do not inspire songs. Should one expect men to
expend themselves in serving a people, as Moses, Aeneas, and Milton's Mes

siah did, if that people proclaims itself animated by no common purpose more
comforts in There is something contradictory

safety?
inspiriting than nursing
about dying for security or about undertaking every sort of privation and incon
as heroes of epic poems do, in order to arrange for someone else's
venience,
future ease. The contractarian notion appears to disparage self-sacrifice. Why
for protecting property give himself
should one self-seeking party to a contract
Locke's conception places at the origin of a political order not

up for another?
God's providence, the foundation of community for Moses, Virgil, or Milton,

thereby confining collective effort to human secular
but human contrivance,
projects remote from divine interest. If men come to view their own will rather
than the will of God as the source of law, they will hardly endorse the enabling
228 Interpretation
premise of traditional heroic literature: the hero leads his people under the su
pervision of a divine sponsor who judges conduct while inspiring hero and
community alike. Inasmuch as contractarian models require a suppression of
religious enthusiasms, which would inject unnegotiables into the social cal
culus, it is not coincidental that Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau all seek to mod
erate religious attachments, and that the Locke of The Letter on Toleration
produces the definitive modem argument for compromising belief. Lockian

man in Lockian society diffidently, conforming his conduct to
practices religion
nonheroic expectations. Once Lockian teaching informs manners and guides

judgment, the modem writer who seeks heroic subjects finds himself dispos
sessed of suitable material, i.e., ideals of self-sacrifice, dispossessed of a peo

ple worth the efforts of a hero and appreciative of his deeds, and dispossessed
of divine authority, of a providential scheme and a theodicy.
My supposition that Melville means to present his tale against the backdrop
of such a society organized along lines prescribed by Lockian theory throws
some light on a problem of the novel's construction. Moby-Dick contains 135
"Extracts" "Epilogue."
chapters plus prefatory and an Although the dramatic

interest attaches to Ahab's pursuit of the white whale, Melville delays the first
appearance of Ahab until the twenty-eighth chapter, after almost a fourth of the
book has Granted, important matter transpires in the exposition Ish
elapsed.
meeting Queequeg, Elijah's warnings at the wharf, Father Mapple's

mael'
Jonah sermon still, the foreground seems of such inordinate length as to
require justification. We are told Melville was well along in composition be
fore he decided to throw his focus upon Ahab, but whatever the exigencies of
composition, he chose to retain at publication all the detail of arranging trans

portation and lodging in two towns, plus a tavern scene, bargaining
with shipowners, and elaborate ship descriptions, although all this delays intro
ducing Ahab and launching the action proper. Justification for this undra-
matic foreground may lie in Melville's intent to make us feel the unleavened
weight of a society given to getting and spending. Ahab will have to over
come this utilitarian preoccupation in pursuing his metaphysical vengeance, and

Melville must overcome the same inertia if he means to convey a sense of epic
momentousness.
The link with Lockian thought is commerce. A society organized for trade
on the modem scale answers best to the project of enlarging and securing prop
erty, the goal of political association in Locke's contractarian theory. Commer

cial activity combined with the effects commerce works on manners and moral
outlook occupy the reader's attention from the moment Ishmael hits upon the
notion of going to sea until Ahab steps out of his cabin more than a hundred
later. From initial Manhattan
counters"
pages musings on clerks "tied to to the

moment of Ahab's entrance, commercial transactions absorb Ishmael, Quee
queg, and several minor characters who make their brief entrances for no ap
parent reason other than that they serve to establish a busy commercial
atmosphere. We see almost no occasion for man meeting man in New Bedford
and Nantucket other than seller finding buyer seeking employer. A
or employee
tavern-keeper purveys doubtful liquor in cheating tumblers and lodges a canni

bal since "He pays
reg'lar."
Even the non-Westemer, South-Sea-Islander

Queequeg, first appears as a vendor (of shrunken skulls). The proprietress of
the second inn Ishmael visits worries about the damage suicides inflict on her
business a harpooner killed himself with the tool of his profession in one of
her rooms, provoking her to complain that he has rained one of her counter
panes. Melville prepares us for the disappearance from the story of the most
romantic figure among his characters, the shore-despising Bulkington, with the
"sleeping-partner"
authorial remark that Bulkington remains a (3.16), a term
borrowed from nineteenth-century financial jargon signifying an investor whose
role in a firm went unpublicized. The cenotaphs on the walls of a church em
phasize the perils of the industry that dominates this region. On the deck of the
Pequod, we observe the painful husbandry of the ship's owners and are in
structed in their practice of paying the seamen by assigning various fractions of
the net profit. Then we discover that ledger calculations induce these Christian
owners to several accommodations with Mammon. The long passage to the
hunting zones permits no delays for religious observances, hence once outfitted
the ship must set sail even though the day is Christmas (22.104). Bible-quoting
Quaker shipmasters urge the mates not to work too much on Sundays, but not
to miss a fair chance of a whale, Sunday or not (22.105). Ishmael will later
breaking"
characterize whalemen as "Ex officio professors of Sabbath

(67.303). Bildad and going to allow pagan Queequeg aboard, but
Peleg are not
owne
put their scruples aside once they see him dart a harpoon (18.89). The
anxiety for gain prevails over their trust in providence and thrift pinches their
charity. Stubb warns Pip a whale will fetch much more in the market than a
black boy. Not surprisingly, then, the only formal definition of man to occur in
(93.413). Strenuous belief does
animal"
the novel is "money-making not ap

pear once we read beyond Father Mapple's sermon, and his preaching makes
Melville suggests that commercial avid

something of a quaint impression
since
religious concerns.
ity has supplanted once-paramount
portrayal of New England manners, Melville means to establish at
By this
the outset the impression of a society engaged in exchanging Christian stan
dards for Lockian. Older religious pieties are at the point of yielding to new
emancipated avarice. Commercial preoccupations follow

passions generated by
Lockian ideas of atomistic individuals devising cooperative so
naturally from
arrangements to make themselves secure in their accumulation of property.
cial
for commercial activity on a large scale answers to Locke's
A regime organized
that men seek, and

ought to seek above all else, to preserve their lives,
teaching
preserve them in some comfort. Whale oil brings comfort to buyers
and then to
fuel for their lamps, while profits from whaling secure the estates
by providing
men and their families. The
constant press of business in port and
f Nantucket
230 Interpretation
aboard ship seems designed to suggest that for owners and mariners alike, light
from whale oil takes precedence in their moment-by-moment consciousness
over the light which ancestral piety had identified with God's son.
Melville devotes lengthy passages to explaining the whaling industry so as
to keep in sight the image of the Pequod as an epitome of a society organized
for the sake of commercial venturing. Excepting Ahab and Ishmael, who says
he goes to sea for what we today would call psychic therapy, the men, diverse
in race, regional ties, and religion, agree to be shipmates for no other reason
than making their livelihood. If they have their further motivation, both Ahab
and Ishmael nonetheless must get their living in their present circumstances by
contributing to a commercial enterprise. Ishmael appreciates the cash motive,
as we see from his trite meditation on original sin:
The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard
thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, what will compare with it? The urbane
activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we
so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account
can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to
perdition! (1.6)
Even Ahab must have a care for maintaining appearances of managing a prof
itable voyage (46.212-13). Not surprisingly, then, Ishmael characterizes as
sensible"
"sage and the latter-day Puritan's accommodation to the spirit of ac

quisition: "a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.
dividends"
This world pays (16.74). Similarly the Locke of the Second Treatise
pays lip service to the Christian teaching that covetousness is "the Root of all
Evil."
Yet the invention of money is for Locke the key to man's transition from
Metal"
a simple, rude existence to civilization, since "a little piece of yellow

makes possible the accumulation of property and with it that stimulation of
acquisitiveness which for Locke is the engine of human advancement. Melville

thus makes clear enough that he intends to portray a utilitarian society colliding
with a man of spirit who despises comfort and cares nothing for preserving his
body. In Ahab Melville imagines the sort of leader capable ofmaking Ameri
cans shift their bearings from
preoccupation with gainful toil to willing service
in a project promising more risk than profit. Yet, as I will argue presently, for
all its daring his project is more Lockian than traditionalist in its premises.
Ahab's nobility consists in his impatience with utility, pleasure, accom
modation, compromise, and conventional attitudes of piety.

Observing on his
first view of his captain the physique of a man whose spiritual energy seems to
have consumed his own flesh, Ishmael likens Ahab to a martyr suffering for
some as yet undefined heterodoxy, "a man cut away from the stake, when the
fire has overranningly wasted all the limbs without consuming
them'
(28.123).
Melville plays up without explaining a livid scar which one old tar maintains
runs the entire length of Ahab's body. He alludes to a rumor of Ahab
having
been branded, presumably by lightning, in some elemental clash. Finally, Ahab

himself hints at the scar's
having been made by divine fiat to chastise him.
Whatever its origins, the scar and the
extraordinary vigorous spareness of
Ahab's person combine with his whalebone leg to
convey the sense of a spirit
scornful of comforts in his preoccupation with mental struggle. We are not
surprised to see such a man fling the pipe he has been smoking into the sea.
Easy-living Stubb smokes continually, and companionable Queequeg shares a
peacepipe with Ishmael, but Ahab looks upon bodily comforts as obstacles to
the high intensity he maintains awake and, according to the steward's report,
even in his dreams. During the final chase, like an Achilles become all spirited
ness in his rampage, Ahab scarcely needs sleep or food. Melville contrives a
certain dignity for his chief character by making him, as it were, so much
compressed spiritedness in contempt of the compromising materialism now
gaining authority over his New England compatriots.
Commercial manners favor the easy familiarity Flask enjoys and an origi
nally misanthropic Ishmael leams to practice. Although not insensible to human

affections, Ahab holds himself unselfconsciously aloof. He makes no show of
his dignity; but because all his attention turns inward, he is oblivious of other
men until he has for them, or until they happen to obstruct his quest
some use
or, like unthinking Stubb, belittle his affliction. Ahab doesn't smile, speak at
table, nor, excepting fitful and quickly repented confidences half-opened to
Starbuck and a despotic benevolence toward the cabin boy, does he enter into
familiarity with anyone. Yet the distance he preserves between himself and his
men results solely from self-torment. We are supposed to regard him not as
snob but troubled visionary.

Lockian bargain-seekers doubtless experience the common ran of vexations,
but large sorrow is presumed to convey extraordinary spiritual capacity beyond

a utilitarian's conception of human likelihoods. Ishmael says Ahab bears a
"crucifixion"
in his face. Without making extensive inventory of his injuries
acoming to cases that would certainly diminish our sense of his grievance
Ahab displays his continual consciousness of some unpardonable if unspecified
affront. His language resounds with melancholy, resentful expressions evoca
tive of Hamlet, outraged Lear, or the broodings of the author of Ecclesiastes.
Melville depicts strength in grief, never plaintive or self-commiserating a
strength, moreover, which offers to champion the cause of all deep-grieving

Ahab's sorrow appears magnificently in excess of the wound inflicted by
men.
eventually we
meet another ship captain who has had an arm
the whale since
had lost leg (chap. 100), yet the tangy good
way Ahab
a
taken in the same
whaleman remind us that physical impairment need not be

spirits of the British
revelation of some altogether unacceptable malignity deep down in
taken as
things.
In fact there is evidence suggesting that Ahab s rebellion against a cosmos
malevolent could not have had its origin in his physical loss. From
he finds
232 Interpretation
close attention to Melville's chronology one concludes that the most shocking
blasphemy charged to Ahab appears to have occurred prior to the voyage that
brought his injury, since Elijah speaks of his having defiled a chalice in a
church sometime previous to the voyage during which the whale took off his
leg (19.92). Already before he encountered the whale Ahab thought he had
sufficient cause thus to express his non serviam. Consequently, we are sup
posed to recognize in Ahab's grievance against Moby-Dick the culmination
rather than the origin of a protracted period of spiritual rebellion.
What lies back of Ahab's defiance, then, is evidently some animus resem
bling the theological equivalent of unrequited love. We see this as the novel
builds toward the final chase, when Melville discloses the origin of Ahab's
mysterious scar in another act of defiance directed toward God-in-nature. The
Candles,"
crucial chapter, "The depicts an Ahab who demonstrates his indif

ference to terrors of a typhoon as he stands up to lightning and ostentatiously
extinguishes the corpusant fire with his breath. He stands with right arm up
lifted to salute lightning which still shows on the mast, and while he keeps his
foot in contact with devil- worshiping Fedallah, Ahab addresses the spirit of
fire:
Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire whom on these seas I as Persian once did
worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the
scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is
defiance. (119.507)
Ahab was once prepared to worship the source of light and life, but the wound
suffered in the act of devotion he interprets as a rebuff and an admonition to
stand off in fear rather than approach in amity. We know Ahab feels thwarted
in his love because he subsequently says, "Come in thy lowest form of love and
thee."
I will kneel and kiss Ahab would hold out an open hand to a God who
showed himself disposed to love, yet he has convinced himself that no such
loving God presides over nature, and he will not respond to a ministry of fear
because to do so, he feels, would be to submit a higher agency to a lower.
Ahab's greatness of soul will not permit him to worship except on his own
terms and only if God meets a test Ahab will set him.
Ahab seems to have rejected altogether such proofs of love as his fathers
once ascribed to Christ's redemptive generosity. In fact, Ahab never mentions
Christ, insisting instead that natural phenomena be the sole test of divine benef
icence. Ahab will not subscribe to the idea of a loving God from the evidences
of created beauty and order that Ishmael observes at times because he thinks
rapacity ultimately prevail in physical nature. In the chapter imme

and ugliness
diately preceding the first day's chase, Ahab confides to Starbuck the lesson he
has learned from forty years of whaling. He thinks of himself as having warred
deep."
all that time against "horrors of the Observing the oceanic phenomena
Ishmael'
from s perspective, a reader will likely be as impressed with its tran-
quil,
Armada"
life-producing rhythms as with its death-dealing commotions. The "Grand
chapter serves to focus this sense of order with its tender sea pastoral.
Ishmael'
Against s
testimony Ahab's career spent in chase and combat has so
concentrated his imagination upon the rigors of his profession that he becomes
indifferent to these benign aspects of the seascape. Habits of aggressiveness
long reinforced make Ahab keen to perceive and to exaggerate nature's
own destractiveness. Therefore when Starbuck attempts to dissuade Ahab from

further pursuit by appealing to the serenity of a fine day, the old man considers
he has refuted the mate when he points to an instance of nature's law of eat or
be eaten:
"Look! see you Albacore! Who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish?
Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged
bar?"
to the (132.545)
Melville intends us to think of Shakespeare's Lear when we hear Ahab's indict

ment of the Creator. Like Lear on the heath and for much the same reasons of
disillusionment, Ahab ascribes perversity to nature. All living beings are mur
derers. Whoever has made them and continues to govern them has made them
to be killers. The supreme law of creation is self-preservation, life overbearing

"higher"
life with no assurance that the devourer can claim to be than the
devoured in any other regard than in its capacity to exert superior force.
Melville evidently would have it that Ahab's experience is shared by honest
observers of carnage between the species. Queequeg moralizes on a shark feed
ing-frenzy: "Queequeg no care what god made him shark . . . wedder Fejee
Ingin"
god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam
cannibal?"
(66.302). Ishmael can ask, "Who is not a (65.300), and he medi
tates upon "the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon
began"
each other, carrying on eternal war since the world (58.274). Stubb
approves Fleece's sermon exhorting large-mouth sharks to share with those
demselves."
who "can't get into de scrouge to help Stubb's comment: "that's

Christianity."
The narrative action suggests that nature's law of domination by bloodshed

Ahab's the irreligion of the
extends up to the human
realm. charge echoes
had
"Forecastle-Midnight"
who commented on one mariner's

Manxman in
knife against another:
drawing a
Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God,

In that ring Cain struck
mad'st thou the ring? (40.178)
men with the disposition to kill their brothers, such a God

If God has created
and the most practical way to defy is to war against God's

ht to be defied,
rl th dealing
creatures while boasting consciousness of thereby expressing
, esentment
against the Author of this botched creation. It appears there
234 Interpretation
embitters Ahab's defiance something of the resentment associated with apos

fathers'
tasy, disappointment that experience has denied him his trust in a be
nevolent Deity. Nature having shown itself to be what it is, however, he will
dedicate himself to a religion of hate as fervently as, had the world bome out
the hopes of believers, he would have devoted himself to practicing loving

kindness. Melville seems to suggest that trust in the kindness of a personal
providence once it collapses under adverse experience yields to immoderate
resentment against a natural scheme now seen as cruel, hostile, and capri
ciously wasteful.
Christian explanations of evil which blame Satan ran against the further
question why God, having the power to overcome Satan, should

apparently
comply with his adversary. Responding to Flask, Stubb gives Melville's reply
to the orthodox:
"do you suppose I'm afraid of the devil? Who's afraid him, except the old
of
governor who daresn't catch him and put him in double-darbies, as he deserves,
but lets him go about kidnapping people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all
for him? There's

governor!"
(73.326-
the people the devil kidnapped, he'd roast a
27)
By extending to several spokesmen freethinking doubts of a just governor for

this cosmos, Melville means to suggest that Ahab's dispute with God proceeds
from intellectually honest confrontation of evidence widely felt but rarely acted
upon with the resoluteness Ahab embodies. Melville means also to indicate the
grounds on which some of the crew will make common cause with their com
mander in a quest the impiety of which he inclines rather to emphasize than

conceal. Ahab thinks he is more just than God, because if the world were his to
govern, he would rale it with less tolerance for cruelty and waste than God, as
he thinks, stands accountable for.
Ahab's quarrel rests on a wider basis of inference than that provoked by
bloody spectacles in predatory nature. The chapter in which he meditates on the
severed head recently taken has Ahab address the scheme of things
of a whale
"Sphinx"
with challenging questions. He imagines this (so Melville refers to
the head) has witnessed the full scope of human woe under a heartless or unob
servant heaven. The head has seen in sunken navies the rain of national hopes,
children torn from their mothers, and lovers who "sank beneath the exulting
them."
wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to Ahab continues
his indictment with Job's complaint of decent men slain and the wicked pros
pering and concludes with the fancy of a ship struck by lightning as it trans
arms"
ported a "righteous husband to outstretched loving (70.312). Since he

draws the moral "thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel
Abraham,"
of we realize Ahab has taken the very widest survey of man's lot
and has ascribed its misfortunes to divine spitefulness. Moby-Dick simply in
carnates the general malignity Ahab sees everywhere. As Ishmael convincingly
speculates, "he piled upon the white whale's

hump the sum of all the general
rage felt by his whole race from Adam
down"
(41.184). At another place Ish
mael compares Ahab's indignation with the anguish Prometheus suffered
(44.202). Both the Titan and Christian rebel insist that human misery proceeds
from a cruel supreme deity.
More disturbing than Ahab's obsession is his ability to induce other men to
acquiesce in it or even
willingly to serve it. Ahab practices Caesarism, despo
tism advancing by the politician's manipulation of popular passions rather than
by reliance on mere terror. He succeeds partly by accommodating to the ten

dencies of a Lockian social system and partly by appealing to needs neglected
by such a society. Despotic control on the warship in White-Jacket had de
pended on a legally authorized monopoly of force exercised by the officers
backed by their praetorian guard, the detachment of marines included in the
ship's ordinary complement. Ahab never employs force, relying instead on the
arts of incitement, self-dramatization, flattery, bluff, and appeal to self-interest.
Ahab could not succeed in making himself despot over the souls of his crew
did he not first take care to conceal his violation of the mercantile purpose of
the voyage. By cruising the ordinary whaling grounds and taking some few
whales en route to the site where he plans to seek Moby-Dick, he protects
himself from a charge of usurpation for which he could be legally removed
from command. The one custom he permits himself to violate is the unwritten
law of helping the distressed, yet this abrogation of maritime ius gentium is less
risky than misappropriating property. Ahab senses he can safely ignore the
Christian commandment of neighborly charity as long as he makes show of
observing the Lockian commandment to respect another's property. Moreover,
Starbuck'
Ahab undermines s chances for
leading a successful revolt by winning
the approval of common sailors. Following the example of Caesar, he enlists
"aristocratic"
the commoners against an rival.
Caesarism requires a certain flexibility from the despot who must know how
to work upon a variety of human materials. Ahab knows the variety of means at
his disposal for fashioning his malleable populace. Some men will kindle
show of energy. The publicist in Ahab enables him to
merely in response to a
know how to stage himself so as to provide the excitement that will stir the
shallow sort while he also

contrives for the somewhat more intellectually able
motives of avarice. Ishmael attributes to Ahab the
an appeal to more solid
"The permanent condition of the manufactured man . . is sordid-
axiom that
to the mast combines appeals to passions
(46 212). A doubloon he
ness" nails
and greed. The gold piece looks rich beyond its

of excitement, low ambition,
comes bearing glory to the winner of a contest, is earned

exchange value,
and stirs the envy of everyone who loses out. Besides these
without sweat,
mainstays of the demagogue, Ahab knows how to mystify. His sense
ordinary
will allowhim to employ cheap tricks without embarrassing
f d purpose
is evident from his astonishing some of the crew by making a

w If as
236 Interpretation
lightning rod of his own arm when the corpusants descend, and from his effort
to overawe ignorant seamen by making a compass of an ordinary sail needle.
Somewhat more subtly, Ahab knows how to enlist a man's piety in a bad
cause. When he must choose a watchman to guard the line that has hoisted him
aloft in the rigging, he chooses God-fearing Starbuck. Ahab knows Starbuck's
conscience will not permit him to kill even though Starbuck has said Ahab's
mania will destroy ship and crew (130.538-39; 123.515).
In addition to these time-tested expedients of business administration, Ahab
possesses two other holds upon his men, and these he enjoys precisely because
both provide relief from the shortcomings characteristic of a Lockian, commer
cial society. The reason heroic tempers from Homer's time to our own have
despised merchants and mechanical toil is from aversion to the unadventurous,
meanly calculating transactions required for buying low and selling high. Upon
the uncontestable observation that merchants must cut comers, seize little ad
vantages, and minimize risks literary men have propogated the sizeable exag
geration that commercial manners are inconsistent with generosity and
adventure. Several of Melville's poems suggest he endorsed this prejudice. In
any event, the hunt for the white whale gives scope to emotions larger than
those connected with the

whalemen's routine, workaday world of mechanical
labor. Ahab invites all hands to try out the exhilaration of expending them
selves as warriors rather than laborers. Furthermore, he adds a common touch
to this feeling of the sport. They will join with him as comrades-in-arms, their
subjugation to his will obscured by their inebriation in enjoying a sense of a
common will, a shared cause.
Beyond adventure-sharing, Ahab's quest promises a purpose that dignifies

even the meanest auxiliaries, because the hunt for Moby-Dick fabricates a telos
for otherwise aimless lives. It affords a pretense of purposefulness, of that

"meaning."
which we today are accustomed to speak of as The crewmen feel
larger and more alive once they conceive their exertions count toward some end
beyond their personal desires. Ahab knows that human beings respond to ap
peals to unite with something larger than themselves. Accordingly he calls for
sacramental ram, delivers existentialist sermons, and exploits this yearning by
offering his own conduct as a model for perserverance in sublimity. Ahab em
bodies a modem substitute for the sublimation once identified with either phi
losophy, patriotism, sanctity, or selfless love.

What is this meaning to which the men of the Pequod assent, however
vague, partial, and inarticulate may be their grasp of it, when they raise their
voices to consent to Ahab's quarterdeck oath? At bottom,
they and Ishmael
or part of him find Ahab a compelling leader rather than a negligible be
deviled crank, because some portion of their own soul takes his part. In his
attack on the white whale, they acknowledge a poetically emphatic version of
an impulse of resentment which most heirs of the Enlightenment can lay claim
to, a resentment directed against limitations imposed by nature, by the sum of

things not amenable, or not yet amenable, to human improvements. In their

most telling form, these limits impose physical affliction, injury depriving us of
that which is most intimately our own our bodily limbs and faculties. The
most vivid form of human defiance, therefore, is a war conducted against natu
ral limits for the sake of relieving man's afflicted condition. My supposition is
that Ahab's vengeance against Moby-Dick is one in principle with a program
set by Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Kant, and Marx, and
eloquently endorsed this side of the Atlantic by Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton,
and Emerson (excepting Marx, Melville mentions all these authors in his writ
ings). The project of the modem technological regime in either its free or col-
lectivist versions has been to assault unimproved nature for the sake of
enlarging man's estate, to liberate from limits imposed by a nature which op

poses human effort but yields to our socially concerted technological efforts.
Straggles against disease, against all defects of birth and circumstance, against
natural scarcity of food or energy, efforts to prolong life or to make it more
secure or more accommodating

all these strenuous and well-organized expe
ditions against nature's empire take their rise from the impulse which Melville
symbolizes in Ahab's vengeance upon his whale. That malignant principle
which Ahab would strike at, piercing through its masks, is the grudging, con
fining, unfair, and bullying aspect the cosmos displays to a modem man when
he meets opposition to his will where he had required compliance.
A recurrent theme of modem teaching asserts that we properly define our

selves as human beings by opposing a world which appears blindly to frustrate
or even capriciously to maim and destroy human beings, who on all accounts
are supposed the noblest product and lords of earth, and who therefore ought to
find in nature resources instead of obstacles. Holding it nobler to oppose than
submit, Ahab will not patiently endure what he supposes to be either nature's
despotism or its indifferent stupidity. If he cannot make it over, he will at least
strike back at one of the malign agents of this despotism. He shows, thereby,
that human will cannot be cowed, even if the body be subject to such humilia
tion as he has suffered in the loss of the leg. The men of the Pequod respond to
a leader who represents in large and clear terms a resentment they each harbor,
Ahabs"
although inchoately. As Starbuck ultimately perceives, "all of us are
(123.515). Ahab can be seen as having succeeded in supplanting a traditional

with a modernist view of the etiology of evil. For the Christian doctrine of the
Ahab substitutes resentment against a coquette nature who

fall and original sin,
then withholds the means to satisfaction. Man is innocent of

provokes desire,
yet all the same suffers the straitened condition
any originary wrongdoing
aboriginal fall. Like Locke, Ahab transfers the onus
Christians impute to an
from man to nature, or nature's God, yet Locke's remedy, the cultivation of
is too tame for Ahab. He will take more literally the project of
productive arts,
while he invests the straggle with poetic color and reli
war on nature
making
gious zeal.
238 Interpretation
Melville troubles us with the intimation that the project Ahab takes on delir
iously might just as effectively be pursued in cold blood on a national scale and
with the same baneful consequences for the citizens of the republic as is suf
fered by the crew of the Pequod. The number Melville sets for the crew on this
keel"
"federated (30) is the number of the states of the U.S.A. prior to the
admission of California. Although to be sure it is elsewhere the standard com
plement of a whaler, Melville has made a symbolic use of the number thirty for
the states of the union in Mardi, Chapter 158 (thirty stars) and Chapter 160
(thirty palms). Ahab's success in imposing his despotic will on a ship flying the
flag of a republic points to a weakness in the foundations of the American
republic. As indicated previously, Lockian teaching has men form civil society
in the hope of overcoming two obstacles to their security, one human, the other
nonhuman. The threat posed by the unrestrained wills of other men is allayed
by the institution of a government which secures rights, but the same civil
institution also promotes the overcoming of nature's scarcity by facilitating ac
quisition of property and division of labor. Peaceable association with other
men makes feasible a more vigorous prosecution of that campaign against na

ture which arises from the same sovereign cause of self-preservation as does the
contrivance of civil government. Nothing insures, however, that the first end
will not be compromised for the sake of the second. Will men not agree to
sacrifice liberties of their fellow citizens and risk losing some of their own if
the inducement comes in the form of a strong leader who promises in exchange
relief from nature's despotism? If the social contract reduces to a bargain nego
tiated self-preservation, it improbable that self-
on calculations of seems not
interest might consent to despotic power in the hope of maximizing power over
nature's resources.
To bring home this threat Melville does not have to project some hypotheti
cal situation remote from his contemporaries. The prolonged national temporiz
ing with slavery would have seemed to him proof of his countrymen's liability
to accept limits upon human rights in exchange for an institution considered by
some Americans indispensable for subduing the land. He has Ishmael protest in
his cynical reflections on"Fast Fish and Loose Fish":
What are the sinews and souls of Russian serfs and Republican [United States]
but Fast- is the law? (89.398)
slaves Fish, whereof possession whole of the
Ishmael'
s disillusionment over the equivalence of Russian and American despo
tism in the matter of slaveholding extends to his country's foreign policy,
"What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to En
Loose-fish."
gland? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All If the
republic the narrator of White-Jacket praised as bearer of "the ark of man's
liberties"
can countenance slavery in its domestic policy and is no respecter of
rights in its foreign policy, Melville, speaking through Ishmael, feels justified
in now concluding, "What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World
Loose-Fish?"
but (89.398).
Melville is no proto-environmentalist
protesting species-centric depredations
or sounding alarms for a putatively fragile ecosystem. He fears rather that the
more radical impulse driving modem, particularly American, politics may over
whelm the more benign liberalism of Jeffersonian dedication to natural rights.
The problem arises from the amoral character of the principle upon which the
social contract rests. Self-preservation is, first and last, the engine that drives
and the destination sought. To preserve himself the Lockian individual consents
to creating a civil authority, agreeing thereby to regard other men as equals
under law, yet to preserve his life and to preserve it more abundantly that
individual may consent to a despotism which regards men as tools. Within the
system founded in a calculus of self-preservation there appears no moral cause
for self-restraint, and, moreover, the system undermines those religious sanc
tions supporting self-restraint that were once sustained in pre-Lockian polities.

When Ahab makes his display of defying the lightning in the scene previ
ously discussed, he proclaims:
In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a
point at best; whencesoe'er I came; wheresoe'er I go; yet while I earthly live, the
queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. (119.507)
"personality"
Ahab's has been affronted by the maiming dealt by the whale as
well as by the attempted intimidation he presently reads in the storm. He af
firms this personality by persisting in his quest and by communicating his an

imus to a body of men. Personality is modernity's substitute for soul. Its other
name for personality is the self, which Locke defined as "that conscious think
ing thing which is sensible, or conscious of Pleasure and Pain, capable of
. . .
Happiness or Misery, and so is concem'd for it self, as far as that conscious

held Christians to
extends."
ness Without the immortal ordination by ennoble

"personality"
"self is
thinkers'
the soul, the modem or nonetheless sovereign,

and without needing to establish its virtue against such generic standards as are
philosophy it nonetheless is held to deserve a special

upheld by classical moral
individual because it is the

personality"
dignity. This "queenly is altogether
result of individual will putting its stamp on human nature and producing
unique version of human potential brought to specific act. The indi
thereby a
vidual will, the personality, is what the all-compelling passion of self-preserva

happiness,"
It is the beneficiary of of Locke's

"the pursuit
tion preserves.
Jefferson's. One may suspect the notion reduces to a gran

phrase before it was
but however that may be, Melville will not go
diloquent excuse for willfulness,
Ahab's greatness. Yet he does indicate that although
so far in questioning
ample, his efforts are demonic in the degree that
Ahab's character is heroicly
rather than benevolence. Because he regards other men only
he promotes hatred
employed in
executing his wrath against nature and
na-
as instruments to be
240 Interpretation
ture's God, Ahab neglects, and finally chooses deliberately to renounce,

promptings of humanity. His obsessiveness precludes companionable
feeling
with the one crew member Starbuck with whom he might make a friend
ship, and he renounces the fellowship available in the faith his fathers only
of
to espouse the bleak Manichee worship practiced by the Parsee, Fedallah. Most
tellingly, Ahab betrays the trust of subordinates pledged to unquestioning obe
dience. Just before the final chase, Starbuck reminds the older man of the wife
and young son who await his return to Nantucket. But an Ahab almost past
feeling, certainly past acting upon, family affections pushes down husbandly
and fatherly emotions and turns away from Starbuck to cross the deck and gaze
into the water where he sees reflected Fedallah 's face (132.545). Melville here
directs his irony toward an Ahab who himself now causes those sorrows he had
charged to divine indifference in the Sphinx chapter. In the present instance,
not an uncaring God but a preoccupied Ahab sends sailors to the deep and
separates husbands (Starbuck and himself) from faithful wives (Starbuck's, his
own).
A parallelism between Prometheus and Ahab reinforces the latter's violation
of loving kindness. Melville has Ahab evoke the Prometheus myth when he
makes fire bearer ("The Candles"), when he braves
himself a a God he ac
knowledges to be his superior in power, and when he supplies substitutes for

Chart,"
divine providence with his technical resourcefulness ("The "The Nee
dle,"
"Log and Line"). After the manner of the Titan depicted in Aeschylus,
Ahab practices a science altogether utilitarian. Ahab exhibits no interest in
knowing for its own sake.
A chapter depicting the repair of Ahab's ivory leg conveys Melville's skepti
cal estimate of this new Prometheus. We overhear his requirements for recon
structing human nature to produce a machine all will and power:
whilePrometheus is about it, I'll order a complete man after a desirable pattern.
Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks; then chest modelled after the Thames Tunnel;
then, legs with roots to'em, to stay in one place; then, arms three feet through the
wrist; no heart at all, brass forehead, and about a quarter of an acre of fine brains.
. . .
(108.470)
In Melville's romantic hierarchy of faculties, the heart stands for moral judg
ment, while the calculative technical agency is the brain. He declared in a letter
to Hawthorne: "I stand for the heart. To the dogs with the head! I had rather be
head."
a fool with a heart than Jupiter Olympus with his Ahab would remove
the heart because he realizes that feelings generated there his residual attach
ments to wife, child, Starbuck, Pip could soften his otherwise

unbending re
solve. Promethean revisionism serves the
will, finds its instrument in brain
power, and confronts its internal adversary in an opposed moral sense which
prompts love rather than resentment. Early on we were told Ahab had "his
humanities,"
yet this late soliloquy indicates he would suppress whatever re-
mains of compunctions of for the

fellow-feeling sake of giving free rein to
power and will.
Although Ahab means to imitate Prometheus as benefactor, Melville sug

gests he is a specious friend to man. He
his case for revising nature in
states
terms of
contesting with God as mankind's advocate. Ahab
philanthropy:
boasts his love for oppressed human beings and seems to act upon
pity for the
outcast when he takes up with Pip, the black cabin boy who jumps from a
whaleboat in mid-chase and, left for a time alone in the sea, emerges a de
mented, intermittently insightful visionary. Melville so constructs Ahab's
scenes with Pip, however, that he exposes the shallowness of Ahab's pity, if
not its perversity. Ahab has taken no notice of his subordinate until the boy's
misfortune makes him human providence step

suitable as an exhibit illustrating
ping in to rectify God's unconcern. When Ahab takes Pip under protection,
Melville intends we should recall Lear's meeting houseless Tom o'Bedlam. Yet
an equally pathetic Pip elicits from Ahab nothing of the self-recognition Lear
had been moved to. Instead, Ahab arraigns God and befriends the boy so that
he may congratulate himself for his benevolence. Ahab taunts storming skies,
"pomp,"
Lear had his own to "take medicine, take
medicine"
not as (120.509).
Shakespeare's king had charged himself to leam sympathy, whereas Melville
has Ahab boast he surpasses God in pity for suffering human beings. Three
chapters later egoism decked out in ostentatious kindness becomes obvious
when Ahab offers Pip as court evidence to prove "there can be no hearts above
snow-line"
the (125.522). Taking the boy to his cabin, Pip's new protector
treats him to some Enlightenment sermonizing:
Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, to you! See the
omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing
not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come! I feel
prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor's!
From Melville's vantage, what offends in Ahab's vaunt is less some affront to
deity but rather the insult to human dignity. Ahab violates the secular human
ist's moral code when he debases its supreme good of benevolence by turning
kindnesses into expressions of hatred.
up Pip as a cat's-paw to strike at
Taking
the gods shows his philanthropy is adjunct to his pride. His dream of revising
human nature has so chilled his heart that, although he professes love of man,
he neglects to be kind to the actual human beings whose lives are in his care.
Obviously, Pip goes down with all the other mariners dependent on Ahab.
Melville introduces the three-day death chase of Moby-Dick with an episode

designed to gauge the inhumanity of a philanthropy founded in resentment. The
incident of the Pequod's encountering the Rachel, previously alluded to, regis
Ahab who has voiced his pity for mankind in the abstract
ters the irony of an
has rebuked heaven and sea for their unkindness to the human race, now
and
interrupt his hunt at the entreaty of a fellow sufferer. Ahab's last
refusing to
242 Interpretation
contact with human community beyond the decks of the Pequod shows his
having become so entirely consumed by his obsession with his role as protesting
champion of oppressed humanity that he chooses protest over such remedy as lies
within his power, at this moment refusing help to another father, compatriot, and
fellow captain. Self-pity, although it has expanded to pity for mankind at large,
causes Ahab to be cruel to men one by one. Rights of man have become fast-fish
hostages to this embodiment of despotic potentials inherent in the technocratic
impulse, the gentler aspect of Locke mastered by the more compelling.
IV
Melville encloses Ahab's story within Ishmael's in order to juxtapose the

former's career in resentment against the latter's education in self-preserving
acceptance. The contrast has led some readers to suppose Melville offers in
Ishmael a correction to Ahab. This hypothesis proves out well enough when
applied to the novel's theme of discovering proper ways of knowing. Ishmael's

character supplies no corrective Ahab's, however, in the
to matter of locating
better guidance for America's political destiny.
The very source of the mental flexibility which makes Ishmael the superior
student of nature incapacitates him for effective political action. He cultivates
intellectual independence by taking up and then discarding one after another a
number of antithetical perspectives on every issue he inspects. Compounded

with continual irony and self-deprecation, this strategy causes Ishmael to attach
himself only provisionally to any intellectual position. He enjoys exploding
conventional opinion, arguing the humanity of cannibals and the difficulty of
accepting the biblical story of Jonah (chap. 83). A latter-day Montaigne whose
mobility as seaborne intellectual

his sampling a diversity of cultural
permits
tenets on questions metaphysical, religious, or ethical, Ishmael feels wise not to

be bound by any creed. Both as character and as author, he makes the most of a
freedom from sectarianism won for American intellectuals by Jefferson's and
Madison's arguments for toleration drawn from Locke. Ishmael protects him
self from narrowness by keeping a mind open even to the possibility of yet
discovering a transcendent order, "Ah, mortal! then be heedful; for so, in all
this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard
afar"
(102.450). He remains steadfast only in nonsubscription:
Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that
condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery. Your true
whalehunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage, owning no
allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel
against him. (57.270)
Ishmael boasts himself a philosopher because he sees the merely conven
tional basis of opinions less-enlightened minds mistake for truths and because
he maintains
a stoic composure while loose harpoons dart about his head
(60.281). His cetology attests to Melville's preference for Ishmael's intellectual

method over Ahab's.
Collecting and playing off multiple perspectives serves to
correct Ahab's tense, humorless fixation,
enabling Ishmael to grasp that the
way to transcend Ahab's allegorizing lies not in rejecting analogies altogether
(the opposed impercipience of soulless utilitarians like Flask and Stubb), but in
imagining a range of analogies from various vantages not

excluding those of
scientific measurement and commercial utility. If we accept Melville's implica
tion that study of whales stands as a synecdoche for study of anything, we
acknowledge Ishmael's better way. To credit him with philosophy, however,

seems a bit grand. We might suspect Ishmael enjoys less the rigors of pursuing
wisdom than the pleasures of evasion and withdrawal. An alert, supple recep
tivity toward the spectacle of manners and opinion he achieves by learning to

detach himself from practical concerns. Yet he also thereby insulates himself
from pressures to settle into moral judgments which might implicate him in
dangerous action.
The skepticism he carefully preserves permits Ishmael, as Ahab's mono
mania permits him, to elude obligations that might restrain his will. In one of
felicity"
his reveries, Ishmael thinks it prudent to lower aims of "attainable to
home"
the "hearth and (94.416), yet he does not seem to have married (see the
"Town-Ho"
digression). He professes admiration for Jacksonian democracy
without, as far as we can see, intending to stump for candidates. On which side
of the national division over

slavery would Ishmael
for Lincoln, because
enlist:
he despises people who consider a white man "anything more dignified than a
negro"
white-washed (13.60)? Or would he hold with the neutrals since in

another mood he seems to trivialize the issue with characteristic flippancy,
(1.6)? Ishmael's fondness for
slave"
"Who aint a discovering antinomies pre
vents his having any political view worth taking trouble for.
His independence from conventional opinion allows Ishmael to make a reli
able friend of a cannibal, and that opening to affection, he says, generates kind
feelings toward humankind at large. Queequeg has worked him to a mollifica
tion of temper in the glow of which no longer were "splintered heart and mad
(10.51). Not surprisingly for

world"
dened hand turned against the wolfish an
Ishmael who likens all orthodoxy to submerged yet dangerous wreckage of

sailors'
ships (69.309), religion must give way to freethinking and camaraderie.
Even must yield nonetheless to concern for self-preservation. Ish

friendship
mael draws a line beyond which he will not extend his tolerance even to have
his new friend's approval. He refuses to imitate or to sympathize with self-
lati-
severe devotions that require something of heroic discipline. Although a
tudinarian in most articles of religious observance, Ishmael reacts with disgust

lengthy fast. His friend's zeal provokes him to a
to Queequeg's keeping a
one's comforts. He has determined that such rigors as

lecture on minding
"obvious laws Hygiene
sense"
Ramadans"
violate of and common

"Lents and
apple-dumpling."
that "hell is an idea bom on an undigested So that we do

and
244 Interpretation
not take this scoffing to be a banalism that Ishmael grows beyond over the
course of the novel, Melville has his narrator switch to the editorial present
when he voices his creed of self-preservation in comfort:
I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that

person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't
believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic, when it is a
positive torment to him, and in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn
to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the
point with him. (17.84-85)
Ishmael's is the liberal catechism of Locke, a resolve to tolerate diverse theo
logies for the sake of peace while encouraging unofficial uniformity of belief in
the priority of pleasure. His aptness to accommodate sets Ishmael in contrast to
Ahab and allows him to experience sentimental fellowship in the scene of
case,"
"squeezing where he touches the hands of his shipmates and moist-eyed,

to pursue the white whale (94.416).
oath"
forgets "[his] horrible

human-
Since Melville appears to approve his narrator's progress in secular
itarianism by arranging the ponderous symbolism of Ishmael's escape from
death by means of Queequeg 's coffin cum lifebuoy, it may seem the end of
Moby-Dick leads us back to Lockianism by a road lower than Ahab's but more
humane. Ishmael's softer version of modem individualism corrects the militant
harshness of Ahab's stem version, allowing hope for the gradual pacification of
man's estate through self-interested pursuit of comfort and opening the way to
human compassion suppressing anxiety concerning doctrinal questions over
by
which Europe had bled during its two centuries of sectarian fervor. A dividend
accrues in the freedom to muse, an approximation of philosophy sufficient to
satisfy most writers and academics. A reader cannot be certain Melville means
to convey reservations against Ishmael's corrective of Ahab, and yet considera
tion of the political theme will cause us to think there must be a further word
than the antitheses posed by Melville's opposition of Ishmael's "desperado phi
losophy"
to Ahab's promethean despotism.
We can see, for instance, that Ishmael escapes Ahab's inhumanity at the
cost of dampening heroic spiritedness. One admires the generosity Queequeg
displays, first when he dives into an icy sea to save a stranger and, subse
quently, when he plunges into a whale's carcass to rescue a shipmate. Although

Ishmael nobility in Queequeg, he does not recognize that his
also admires this
friend's selflessness may be owing to beliefs in a law higher than self-preserva

tion, beliefs supported by those religious disciplines Ishmael finds offensive to
hygiene and common sense. Clearly enough, Ishmael proves incapable of hero
ism for any reason, not even on behalf of friendship. When a bumpkin insults
Queequeg, Ishmael evidently sits passively awaiting his friend's response
(13.60). Despite his secret decision to dissociate from Ahab, a change of mood
"Try-works"
recorded in the scene and confirmed during the case-squeezing,
Ishmael neither opposes Ahab publicly nor reproaches himself for inaction,
"Town-Ho"
although Melville inserts the digression with its account of a mu
Pequod'
tiny against a despot captain apparently to show that resistance to the s
despot was for all its risks not impossible. Against Ahab's tyranny by persua
sion some counter-persuasion is called for. Since the first mate and the man of
learning are the only spokesmen capable of opposing rhetoric to Ahab's rheto
ric, the ship's company can be saved only by their alliance. During the quarter
deck crisis Ahab succeeds in dominating because at the moment Starbuck
makes his gesture of opposition Ishmael not only fails to support him but adds
his voice to the crew which is shouting its consent.

Whale"
The well-known chapter on "The Whiteness of the gives Ishmael's
reasonfor siding with Ahab at the one moment he might have been successfully
opposed. A tortuous series of meditations on whiteness as symbol for cosmic
meaninglessness builds up to Ishmael's concluding that he was moved to iden
tify the white whale with nature's false promise of a final meaning, white being
atheism"
"a colorless all-color of (p. 195) underlying all natural hues and ex
posing them for "subtle deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only
laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot,
within"
whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house (p. 195). For all
his care ordinarily to look on all sides, Ishmael here succumbs to Ahab's deter
mination to perceive the whale under one aspect only. Ishmael makes a symbol
of Moby-Dick as Ahab is doing, and their overlapping reductions are evident in
Ahab's remark that he dreads to find the whale to be the symbol of mean
beyond"
inglessness: "Sometimes I think there's naught (36.164). Ishmael ad
mires Ahab for striking back at deceitful Nature and thereby creating by an act
of will a meaning for his life in despite of Nature's general meaninglessness.
Creating meaning where there is none to discover is the post-Enlightenment
intellectual's version of the common human impulse toward self-preservation.
At a moment when political action is most requisite, Ishmael proves as vulner
able as the rest of the seamen to Ahab's proposal because a part of him admires
Ahab's force, and the remainder which would resist cannot make alliance with
pious Starbuck, since Ishmael believes he has liberated himself from the tradi
tional religious belief Starbuck embodies. In Melville's allegory of the national
by to commercial
character, a Christianity weakened accommodation prosperity
proves a feeble protector of the ark of man's liberties, while America's intellec
tual class, skeptical of a higher law it identifies with rejected Christian teach
ing, now holds no beliefs which might inspire dangerous political effort on
behalf of freedom. The intellectual suffers a further debility in an ambivalence
that has him partly admire despotic concentrations of the national prowess in an
assault on deceitful or begrudging Nature. Although Ishmael may discover an
intellectual vocation in the celebration of the whaling industry, his insistence on
that he becomes to the politi

his doctrinal independence is such never attached
cal life of an actual community. That is why in the editorial present he stipu-
246 Interpretation
Pequod'
lates we are to call him Ishmael. He was at the time of the s voyage
and continues now to be a deracinated observer. Melville may be tracing likeli

hoods and suggesting that a liability of a Lockian society is the tendency of its
intellectuals to purchase their freedom of inquiry at the cost of their country
men's political liberties.
Moby-Dick leaves Melville with the problem of imagining a hero suitable to

world
realize America's mission as "bearer of the ark of the liberties of the
against a despotism grounded in the American doctrine of popular consent. The

alliance Ishmael and Starbuck fail to arrange suggests the shape Melville judges
heroic action might take in a more politically effective Christian endowed with
learning or, alternatively, in a more spirited intellectual capable of appealing to

Christians. Statesmanship founded in a political religion transforming passive
piety into active devotion to the rights of man could suffice to meet Ahab's zeal
with an equal but opposite republican temper. An appreciation of the timeliness
of such a statesmanship so founded seems to have set the plan Lincoln adhered
to throughout a career in which he tried to win assent to the proposition that the
principle of natural rights has priority in the national purpose over the principle
of consent. This was the issue Lincoln debated with Stephen A. Douglas in the
Illinois Senate campaign of 1858. Lincoln thought America's conquest of na
ture represented by expansion westward and industrialization through the rail
road could not be allowed to extend slavery, even if the people of the
territories consented to importation of slaves.
Although Melville's literary career spanned Lincoln's political career, I find

no evidence that Melville followed Lincoln's speeches in the forties and fifties.
His volume of poetry, Battle Pieces and Aspects of War, deals directly with
Lincoln in a single poem lamenting his Instead of
assassination. focussing the
series of Civil War poems on the man who presided over the Union at war,
Melville throws his emphasis upon portraying a offering his own
people,
thoughts as a projection of the national temper Lincoln had forged between
1860 and 1865. The dedicatory notice announces this emphasis on a heroism of
collective sacrifice: "To the

Memory of The Three Hundred Thousand Who in
the War for the Maintenance of the Union Fell Devotedly Under the Flag of
Fathers."
Their Lincoln's statesmanship is best shown, Melville may have de
cided, through his effect upon the people he led.
From the outset Melville invites his readers to perceive his particular stance
toward the Civil War: the lavish expenditure of blood and resources for a cause
not evidently profitable to the ordinary Union soldier attestshuman capacity to

rise beyond calculations of self-interest. The sacrifice offered by the three hun
dred thousand implicitly rebukes both the cautious self-preservation practiced

by Ishmael and the self-assertive individualism pursued by Ahab in his exalta

personality."
tion of "queenly
NOTES
1 . White-jacket's expectation for America as a redeemer nation is evident in the rhetoric of his
time"
tribute to "the Israel of our entrusted by providence "to bear the ark of the liberties of the
world"
(chap. 36).
2. The Writings of Herman Melville, ed. Harrison Hay ford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas
Tanselle (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press; Chicago: Newberry Library, 1988), vol. 6,
chap. 33, p. 148. Subsequent citations within parentheses refer to chapter and page of this edition.
Discussion
Antiquing America:
Reflections on Rahe's Republics
Thomas K. Lindsay
University of Northern Iowa
INTRODUCTION: OUR PERENNIAL SELF-EXAMINATION
Scholars'
What does it mean to be an American? responses to this question
present an unsettling collection of contraries: America builds on Machiavellian
foundations its founding practically repudiates Machiavellianism; America
spurns classical republicanism it revives the classical republican defense of
politics'
dignity; America is the capitalistic order par excellence its founding

ratified an anti-capitalistic, communitarian republic; America reconciles revela
tion with rationally discerned, natural-rights doctrine its overriding concern
with rights undermines revealed religion.
From the persistence and contrariety of inquiry into America's identity, one
might infer that part of what it means to be an American is to ask without
American.1
ceasing what it means to be an Doubtless every people at times
questions the content and perhaps even the existence of its collective identity.
Yet America takes this natural process a step further. Apparently we suffer
from what is currently called an identity crisis.
We see this not only in academic but also political discourse. At times we
appear so certain of our merit and thus of our identity that we rally round
hill."
leaders who reflect our view that we occupy a "city on a Then, in the
wink of the national eye, we flirt with the proposition that our political life so
Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American
Revolution (Chapel Hill: Carolina Press, 1992), xiv + 1,201 pp., $49.95. The
University of North
work is now available from the Universityof North Carolina Press in a revised, three-volume,
paperback edition, published in 1994. Volume 1, The Ancien Regime in Classical Greece, xxiv +
379 pp., $22.95; vol. 2, New Modes and Orders in Early Modern Political Thought, xxvii + 485
pp., $24.95; vol. 3, Inventions of Prudence: Constituting the American Regime, xxxi + 377 pp.,
$19.95.
I wish to thank Matthew J. Franck for his thoughtful critique of an earlier draft of this essay.
All errors are mine.

250 Interpretation
meani
lacks content as to require a national quest for a new "politics of But

if one element of the answer to the question of the uniqueness of the American
soul consists in our perennial penchant for self-examination, this is effectively
to say that emptiness is part of who we are. Such a description, while less than
satisfying, may also be less than surprising. One wonders whether our
inability
to paint in all its particulars a self-portrait of American citizenship owes to our
being in some measure the product of thinkers who were, in the final count,
citizens of no particular country but, rather, of the world.
Yet, from another perspective, we appear more self-aware than our aca
demic and political debates sometimes suggest. Put simply, to be American is

to subscribe to the principles of the popularized philosophy undergirding our
constitutional order, that is, the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Inde
But these truths, which apply not only to American citizens but to
pendence.2
all human beings perhaps because they apply to all human beings somehow
fail to answer fully for us the question of who we are. Does conceding that our
settled, core principles serve incompletely as the noetic matrix for our self-
examination require us likewise to own that a complete appraisal of America's
soul must transcend and, in this sense, declare insufficient our officially
sanctioned ends of self-preservation, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Might this mean that any evaluation of national purposes from the perspective
the ends constitutive of a completed or perfected life "un-

of is, in a sense,
American"? More precisely, is the very lack of national content that so per
plexes us simultaneously indispensable to the way of life on whose basis we
trumpet our "exceptionalism"?

The nature of these questions points the would-be reader of the American
mind to the need for more than historical erudition. Because the deepest under
standing of an epoch requires first our coming to understand it as it understood

itself, an accurate account of America must come to grips with its commitment
to what the Declaration regards as the transhistorical, self-evident truths by

world."
which it justified our revolution to a "candid Investigating what it

means to be an American requires an understanding not only of American his
tory but also of the philosophers and philosophy invoked by those who framed
the Constitution. While foundings are important for the study of regimes other
than America's, the gravity of our founding is another aspect of our unique
ness. The struggle over the Constitution produced public debate of an order
much higher than perhaps has ever been witnessed in political contests. Amer
"philosophic"
ica is, in an important sense, the first polity the first regime
founded explicitly on appeals to truths self-evident to the unassisted reason, and
not on the authority of tradition or myth. The founding presents for our scrutiny
a group of highly educated men serious about both political philosophy and the
practical problems of their day. Reading the records of their debates, one finds
philosophic arguments brought to bear on practical questions in a manner and
with a directness unparalleled in political history. Perhaps Fisher Ames's 1788

Antiquing America 25 1
observation on the founding best states the point: "legislators have at length
philosophy."
condescended to speak the language of political As a result, the

successful student of the American soul needs to come equipped with both
historical and theoretical competence.
Paul Rahe brings this rare mix of skills. His Republics Ancient and Modern
escapes the Scylla and Charybdis of unphilosophic history and ahistorical phi
losophy into fall many of the major treatments of America. By training

which
first a historian, Rahe understands the ancillary character of historical data in

relation to the permanent questions. His gifts are such that he provides the
reader careful interpretations of the philosophic texts that address republicanism

and then situates these texts in relation to the historical circumstances in which
and to which they were offered. Given the magnitude of the task Rahe sets for
himself, it is not surprising that Republics is a very long book. In support of his
ambitious thesis Rahe offers the reader a 782-page body, 346 pages of meticu
index.3
lous notes, and a 70-page Yet his prose is highly accessible and his
narrative powers enviable. No reader of this tome can fail simultaneously to be
awed and pleased by Rahe's massive yet mellifluous exposition.
While his final destination is the American character, arriving there requires
Rahe to take his readers on a twenty-five-hundred-year odyssey that begins in
Regime,"
ancient Greece. In book 1, "The Ancien he paints for the reader the
always fascinating and sometimes stupefying character of the first experiments
with democracy in the Greek polis. Here we learn what democracy without
Orders,"
rights demands and supplies. Book 2, "New Modes and details ency
clopedically the resolute break with antiquity ushered in by Machiavelli, Des
cartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Harrington, Locke, and their followers. Book 3,
Prudence,"
"Inventions of the work's denouement, examines America in light
of the debate between the ancient city and its modem critics. Here Rahe identi
"mixed"
fies those elements of republics ancient and modem that he finds by
America to form what he argues is a novel brand of republicanism.
That Republics culminates, literally and figuratively, with America is ex
plained by purposes at once scholarly and political. Rahe detects here and in
the other Western democracies a drift toward the "soft, administrative despo
tism"
foretold by Tocqueville (pp. 6-7). He worries that the muscularity re

quired of self-government cannot be maintained in a polity that "effectively
decisions"
relegates all severely contentious political as well as a growing num
ber of policy questions to a life-tenured, unelected judiciary in tandem with a
similarly unaccountable federal bureaucracy. To worsen matters, those who
occupy the national legislature intended by the Framers to be the branch most
responsive to popular opinion have so stacked the electoral deck that today
for nearly in These mu
personnel."4
"death and retirement account all changes
tations, added to the virtual death of federalism, lay bare our "decline in demo
vigor"
cratic (p. 7).

"genetic"
Is this decline a consequence of our fundamental principles or
252 Interpretation
incidental, or the result of some mix of reason and chance? Divining the answer
is both obligatory and peculiarly burdensome for us. Our principles of liberty,
equality, and consent have been so spectacularly victorious here and abroad
that we can today scarcely conceive any objections to their unqualified justice.
Our success threatens to rob us of the detachment requisite to self-understand
ing. That there could be another way for a people to govern worse still, that
justice could consist in a regime in which the people does not govern is un
thinkable for us (p. 8). The intellectual liberation we seek is at once invited and
inhibited by what have become after two hundred years of familiarity- and
innocent in favor
reason.5
success-bred nonchalance prejudices of calculating

Yet to maintain the particular justice offered by liberal democracy, we need
to be liberated from our democratic presuppositions. Such liberation, argues
Rahe, is enhanced by intense study of both the great alternative to our republi
can vision, the ancient polis, and the modem critique of antiquity. Reflection
on ancient civilization and its discontents prepares us to face without blinking
the strangeness the culture-spawned uniqueness of our own way of life. We
return from our inquiry strangers in what was once native land; we scrapie to
accept at face value principles that further inspection may well show to be only
shadows cast on the wall of our culture-cave. Qua strangers, we may glean
more fully the uniqueness of America.

Much of Rahe's exposition of America's uniqueness is unlikely to sit well
with those currently in charge of academic orthodoxy. While the generality of
historians underscores economic and social class as key to understanding the
ancient polis, Rahe follows Thucydides, Plato, and especially Aristotle, whose
descriptions and evaluations of the diverse cities look first and foremost to their
"regimes."
differing The regime or politeia denotes who rales in the city and
for what purpose or purposes. Classical regime analysis proceeds from the
"people"
premise that what constitutes a fully and finally lies in what it loves
openly and earnestly. Rahe cites Augustine's compelling language, "'a people
is a multitudinous assemblage of rational beings united by concord regarding
loved things held in
common'"
(p. 2).
Aristotelian regime analysis is Rahe's methodological paradigm a choice
that justifies itself repeatedly throughout his tome. Through regime analysis he
clarifies historical periods and issues whose essence has been largely obfus
cated in the last two centuries by the methodology of modem social science. He
challenges the present tendency to deem Athens rather than Sparta antiquity's
political touchstone. He also confronts the view that
early modem thought is
break"
largely consonant with antiquity. Rather, he detects a "decisive between
ancients and modems, one somewhat camouflaged by the rhetorical intentions
of the latter (p. x). His exhaustive study of the
early modem period adds valu
able historical evidence to Leo Strauss's interpretation as presented in, for ex
Writing.6
ample, Persecution and the Art of
Rahe likewise dissents from the dominant historical schools on the question
Antiquing America 253
of America's character. Today's historians clash over whether America at its

"republican
confused.
founding was or liberal, ancient or modem, or simply

For Rahe the founding established a "deliberately contrived mixed regime of
sorts liberal and modem, first of all, but in its insistence that to vindicate
human dignity one must demonstrate man's capacity for self-government, re

well"
(p.
regime"
publican and classical as x). Historically the phrase "mixed

has referred to an order whose goodness derives from its ability to mix the
city's most powerful elements in such a manner that all are both satisfied with
and limited in their political participation. In Aristotle's mixed regime, the rich
few and poor many rale better together than either would separately; the defects
in each ruling body are mitigated by their mixing. In the England from which
most of the early colonists came, power was divided between the Crown and
Parliament; the latter was composed of one house representing inherited wealth
(Lords) and one, the people (Commons). This mix looked to marry the energy
that comes from unitary execution, the wisdom found in the few with high
education and good breeding, and the fidelity to the people characteristic of
regime"
popular institutions. To these traditional usages of "mixed Rahe adds
what he purports to discover at our founding: America mixes ancient and mod
"man's capacity for

self-government."
em principles as regards
Propelling Rahe's interpretation of America is his conclusion that the debate

between ancients and modems revolves finally around the issue of the status of
logos our capacity for speech and reason, by which we deliberate about and
seek to persuade others of what constitutes the advantageous, just, and good.
Is logos capable of liberation from the passions? Or is it finally but the pas
sions'
scout and spy? Rahe reads the ancients to argue that man, through pro
per education (paideia), can acquire moral rationality sufficient both to
justify and to require his efforts to communicate to and persuade others of the
truth of his opinions concerning advantage, justice, and goodness. Such activ
"political"
ity is in the highest sense. Freeing reason from passion is ante
cedent to the ascent from opinion to knowledge of the good. This liberation
is also largely coextensive with happiness or human flourishing in its highest

natural manifestation.
Education is the means to this nature-fulfilling, humanizing liberation. So
understood, education refers to more and less than our current conception. It
looks first to form character with regard to the regime's ends. As such, it is the
"work"
task of the politeia. Politics is natural, argues Aristotle, because man's
(ergon) has a natural basis, and the completion or perfection of this work re
quires an education that only life in the polis can provide. The summum
bonum, the highest happiness, consists in the unimpeded activity of that which
is highest in man. For this reason, finally, the polis exists, that we might not
be
well."
only live but "live Hence he who would craft a city must a crafter of
souls, or, to say the same thing, politics is education. As such, it is performed
not only by the city on the citizens but also, and equally important, consists in
254 Interpretation
the very activity whose perfection is the animating aim of political education.
Political activity is itself part of the education whose institution is, in turn, the
highest purpose of political activity.
This apparent faith in education's power to liberate reason from passion
this justification of political

activity largely Rahe finds
by modern rejected
ity. Political activity is unfmitful at best and fatal to regime health at worst.
While reason justifies man's claim to superiority over the beasts, it does so
only as the more clever agent of his desires. Because the latter are sovereign,
insatiable, ever-fluctuating in each man's psychic economy, ethical virtue
and
in the classical sense does not and cannot exist. Self-restraint is self-punish
ment, is unhappiness, because it violates our nature. The happy life is not
restrained, is nottranquility in the face of nature's limitations; it is much desir

ing and much enjoying. Thus the content of happiness varies not only from
man to man but also within the same man when swayed by different passions.
truth"
The idea of a summum bonum is illusory. The "effectual reveals man's
life to be a perennial straggle against both other men and miserly nature as he
pursues happiness as it appears to the passion currently at his heart's helm.
Thus "moral
reason"
is fatally flawed, finally impotent, and trust in it by

rulers and ruled has contributed to much of the world's misery. A regime
grounded in the effectual truth will not sacrifice the good that can be achieved
in this world, lower though such goodness may be compared to that inculcated
in republics whose foundings lie only in imagination. Rather, it will ground
itself in the surer support of self-interest in the virtually universal desire for
comfortable self-preservation. The catholicity and strength of this desire can be
depended on to bring men to agree at least on the goodness of a republic that
lowers its purpose from nurturing happiness understood as virtuous activity to
maintaining the conditions of happiness, vulgarly understood. Not happiness
but the pursuit of happiness becomes the new end for the new republic, which
shall not seek vainly to snuff but rather to channel and therewith regulate pas
sion's power in soul and city.
To give birth to the new order requires more than persuading rulers and
ruled of the truth of the new understanding of human nature. It entails also a
natural science liberated from past contentment with nature's and nature's
God's provision for man. The new science will increase geometrically human
power for material acquisition. To the extent that science makes this life more
comfortable and secure, men will tend to ponder less passionately the afterlife
and its requirements. Their spiritedness thusdiluted, they will be less prone to
clash violently over what appear to be from the standpoint of calculating rea
distinctions."
son "frivolous and fanciful
In the enlightened commercial republic, acquisitiveness and science join
forces to combat the penury in which nature has left man. Through technology
and trade, compacts and constitutions, man looks to ascend from victim to
master of his destiny captain of a fate whose dispensation had been
formerly
relegated to the hands of God or gods. Man understood no longer as the politi
cal but rather as the tool-making animal is the more solid foundation bracing
the new republican edifice. Commerce replaces politics; labor, war; technol
ogy, providence. Icarus redirected is resurrected: modem man ascends suc
cessfully to good government because his is the flight from politics.
These are the general terms of the debate between antiquity and modernity
according to Rahe. Where and how does America fit in this dichotomy? First
and foremost, argues Rahe, the Founders acknowledged the force of the mod
em critique of moral reason and hence of political activity. They likewise con
ceded republicanism's heavy dependence on passion-managing institutions. But

they did not reckon institutional controls as merely the means to glean moderate
consequences from the clash of immoderate desires. Just as important, they
found in their institutions a vehicle by which to educate men in the capacities
requisite to reason's freedom. While primarily modem and liberal, then, Rahe's
America retains at its founding at least a vestige of the core of ancient repub
licanism.
FRATERNITYWITHOUT RIGHTS
LIBERTY, EQUALITY,
Regime,"
"The Ancien book 1 of Rahe's tome, unearths the simultaneously
mesmerizing and stupefying character of the polis. With bold strokes Rahe
paints the portrait of the first republics, regimes so distant from ours in orienta
tion and purpose that most today would deem them democratic in name only.
In fact, many would pronounce them nothing less than monstrosities. It may
not be surprising that such should be the verdict of contemporary intellectuals,
for whom generally even modem democracy more precisely, modem democ
racy that is is found wanting in light of this or that abstract standard of justice
and equality. But no less a mind than Hamilton's also voiced contempt for the
ancient cities. In Federalist 9 he grants their "bright talents and exalted endow
ments,"
but finds it "impossible to read the history of the petty republics of
Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the . .
rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual

anarchy."
vibration between the extremes of tyranny and What sort of cities

celebrated"
were these that produced "justly endowments, on the one hand, and
anarchy,"
"tyranny and on the other?
The Greek republics were dominated by politics. Political activity was ori
ented first and foremost to preparation for and prosecution of battle. Not to
appreciate the importance, indeed, the omnipresence of war and its threat to the
Greek cities is not to understand ancient republicanism. To be a citizen of the
ancient polis one had first to be a soldier, and to own land one had first to be a
256 Interpretation
citizen. Nearly all honors and privileges were associated with or sprang directly
from speech and deeds aimed at enhancing the city's martial virtue (polemike)
(p. 31).
From the primacy of foreign policy arose the distinction between those who
by nature merit freedom and those who by nature merit slavery. Rahe finds the
Greek ethos expressed succinctly by Heraclitus, who, "to support his claim that
all,'"
'war is the father of all and the king over observed that warfare "'made
free'"
some men slaves and some men (p. 33). Likewise, the natural right of
Athens'
might lies at the core of notorious defense of its impending sack of
Meios. Accordingly, in practice, "the ordinary slave was a barbarian taken in

kin."
war, kidnapped by pirates, or sold by his That a man would accept slav
ery imposed by force rather than resist and therewith bring on himself either
liberty or death was proof of his inferiority and hence of the naturalness and
justice of his enslavement. Slaves were lovers of mere life; as such, the Greeks
field."
judged them "little better than the beasts of the Throughout Hellas it was
agreed: to lack martial courage was to be less than human (p. 34).
The omnipresence of war and concomitant preeminence of martial virtue
elevated maleness and demoted femaleness. The household and its concerns
generally were deemed inferior to the conduct of politics and war. Because of
their physical weakness relative to men as well their child-bearing role, women
were not soldiers and thus were not citizens. They, along with slaves and small
children, were relegated to the household, to the handling of private matters.
The status of the private realm, like that of those assigned to it, Rahe shows is
"idiot"
suggested by the fact that our word derives from the Greek term de
pleasure"
scribing one inclined "private than to "public

endeavor"
more to (p.
31). Such is required by the equation of virtue and polemike. This equation, in
turn, owed to a worldview in which "one community's freedom was understood
subjection"
to entail another's (p. 59).

The political freedom for which the Greek cities fought, and which they
valued highest among all goods, was not, argues Rahe, freedom as we conceive
it. It was not a status valued first as an instrument to securing and maintaining
life, civil liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and property rights. The ancient
citizen valued life, liberty, and property not as ends in themselves but for the
sake of political freedom. To be politically free meant to participate in the
exclusively human activity of applying logos to the questions of the advan
tageous, just, and good. Rahe cites Aristotle, whom he reads to argue that, for
nearly all men nearly always, "the fully human life is a life of praxis [coopera
logos"
tive action] conducted in accord with the dictates of (p. 36). In political
lay the chance to "be

shine."
activity brilliant, to On erecting rale by the

"immortalize"
demos, the ancient city democratized the aspiration to through
noble service to the
city (pp. 44-45). In so doing, it removed the institutional
barriers that had before impeded the few best among the
fighting men from
their just place in the "middle
ground"
taking the political arena where they

might cultivate and display their public virtue (p. 42).
But in the very charm of this opportunity lay what so filled Hamilton with
"horror."
Rahe, is
sword"
Logos, writes a "double-edged (p. 55). Our ca
pacity for rational speech includes the power to dispute what constitutes the
advantageous, just, and good. Natural diversity of opinion, coupled with the
Greeks'
native longing for glory, accounted for much of the "perpetual vi
bration between
anarchy"
. . .
tyranny and lamented by Hamilton. Competi
tion for glory produced conflict not only between cities but also, and often
much more dangerously, among each city's denizens themselves. Yet

a city at
war or under threat of war is most in need of domestic harmony. To this di

lemma Greek legislators devoted considerable attention. Analysis of Greek leg
lawmakers'
islation shows the preeminent concern was to maintain domestic
"solidarity"
(homonoia).
With the
view to strengthening solidarity, Greek cities sought to do what
"impracticable"
Madison in Federalist 10 would later deem homogenize
"opinions," "passions," "interests."
and The citizens of the ancient polis were
bound together by a moral purpose their full devotion to which would be under
mined by weighty differences in ways of life or thought. Commercial men were
excluded from the city, for commercialism could not but help to spawn a soli
darity-threatening diversity of interests (p. 60). Men whose primary connection
consists in buying and selling from each other cannot be depended on to fight
and die for each other. But it was less that such men made money than how
"invisible,"
they made it that worried the Greeks. Because their wealth was
merchants and craftsmen were judged less likely to defend the city than farmers
and miners, whose wealth lay largely in the land itself (pp. 60-63). Should the
city fall, a farmer would lose, in addition to his land, his slaves, crops,
all
animals, etc. With so much at stake, he would be more likely to fight to the last
to save the city. But commercial men were threatened only if the enemy bur
rowed to the urban center. Even then, should the city fall, it would be far easier
for them to ply their trades abroad than would be the case for those with im
movable wealth.
Promotion destabilizing diversity of interests was not the only threat

of a
posed by commerce. By allowing and sometimes requiring international trade,

commerce opened the city not only to foreign goods but also to foreign ideas
7
(pp. 72-74). Openness to the foreign threatens patriotism in a martial republic.
Isolation best ensures the like-mindedness on which the polis depends. Further,
homonoia is upset not only by commerce-attendant interference from the "out
because trade inures
side,"
but also citizens to haggling and quibbling with
each other (p. 75).

It may not go too far to say that the ancient Greeks judged commerce inimi
cal to republican health precisely due to the success with which it satisfies
"self-interest,"
material needs. Commercial life both demands and supplies

"caution," "distrust."
and Beneath the businessman's restless activity and ap

fundamental"
parent civility lies a "more passion, one shared by the slave

life." death."
"the love of mere In wealth men seek a "hedge against Hence it is

258 Interpretation
not remarkable that modem liberalism, grounded in the primacy of the desire
for self-preservation, should take exactly the opposite view of the rank of com
merce (pp. 75-76). Trade mollifies men, turns spiritedness (thumos) toward
acquisition and away from violent conquest, and hence undermines both strong
hates and strong loves. Trade makes for industrious, timid, calculating men.
Such are not the stuff of a martial republic.
The homonoia led antiquity to take a dim view also of

indispensability of
innovations in the technical arts. As was the case with commerce, the very
success of the enterprise was the chief reason for its censure. Technical innova
tion, by providing goods that soften somewhat life's natural hardness, threatens
likewise to soften men. It was accordingly associated with extravagance, frivol
ity, and deficient polemike (pp. 83-85). Moreover, it was feared that changes
in the arts would lead to changes in the laws, whose power to compel obe
dience rests to a significant extent on foundations that are less than simply
rational. While the arts proceed and succeed by dint of logos alone, laws are
obeyed not simply due to the rational self-evidentness of their rectitude, but
largely because they are all the citizenry has ever known. Laws whose origins
are so ancient as to be shrouded in myth and mystery are for this very reason
more likely to evoke in men the respect, the awe, requisite to obedience. Fre
quent overturning of fundamental laws undermines popular reverence for the
very idea of the rule of law itself. On just such reverence republicanism
depends.8
This singular devotion to homonoia, with its attendant hostility to commerce
and technology indeed, to work and profit generally resulted from more
than the need for military cooperation (pp. 89-94). Appealing again to Aris
totle, Rahe finds that while self-preservation may explain the origin of the
polis, nothing less than justice and piety illuminate its full purposes. The an
cient Greeks saw themselves bound not merely by a rational contract with
"selves."
other, equally egoistic, Rather, the gods themselves bequeathed them

their land and people. These gods also gave the city the laws it
by which
defined itself and in which it educated its children. The very terms (much less
"church" "state"
the concept of "separation of) and did not exist. Piety was
patriotism and patriotism, piety; and here lay the root of the ancient citizen's
public-spiritedness (pp. 115-19). Aristotle deems spiritedness (thumos) "the
love"
power by which we (Politics 1327b40-41). Extrapolating from this, one
can infer that spiritedness is in the service of what we love. Paraphrasing from
another tradition: where a man's treasure is, there will his spiritedness be also.
Public-spiritedness, then, is the power by which we love and serve the city.
Civic devotion which, even in the best of cases, exists
perpetually in tension
with the private side of our nature is animated fully and finally by the view
that in fulfilling civic duty one most pleases, and hence comes closest to, the
divine sources of the city's being and justice. The highest happiness, the great
est nobility, awaits only those willing and able to lay down their all in defense
of the temples of their city's gods. In the life of the committed citizen man
finds the fulfillment of the longing manifested by love and served by thumos.
By the same reasoning, to fail to do one's duty to the city was not only trea
sonous but impious (p. 116).
For the bulk of the citizens, then, the glue binding them to the performance
of their duties, especially during wartime, consisted of the twin fears of punish
ment by gods and shame before one's fellows. In the marriage of piety and
patriotism Rahe finds the core of the paideia by which the ancient republican
virtues were inculcated in the citizenry. As Nietzsche recognizes, these were

"hard"
virtues, pursued and prized precisely for their hardness. For the Greeks
"toil" "reverence,"
(ponos) was father to and without reverence there could be
but little of the manly courage that was for them virtue entire (pp. 123-28).
If the chief aims of ancient education were to avoid strife at home and
prepare for battle abroad, no polis so distinguished itself as Lacedaemon. More

life."
than any other citizen body, the Spartans "shared a common way of Their
success at making many into one was owing primarily to the shared fear of an
uprising by the subject helot class, which greatly outnumbered the citizenry and
Spartans'
on whose forced labor the leisure for political participation depended
(pp. 140-42). Given the extraordinary and permanent danger of its situation,
Sparta enacted a regimen that demanded equally extraordinary efforts on behalf
of the city. At the root of the Spartan soul lay a piety that can be appraised
"exaggerated"
even on ancient terms (p. 145). While Greek cities generally
"music"
employed (poetry set to music) as an important means of "civilizing
thumos"
of inspiring love for the city and hence of turning thumos in a politi
cal direction music took center stage in the Spartan paideia (pp. 125-26,
144ff.) The poetry of Tyrtaeus bolstered the self-forgetting reverence indispens
able to Spartan life. Spartan poetry sang its paeans not to the man lusty after
immortal glory for himself but to the selfless hoplite who labored solely for his
city.
Added to Sparta's singular music education in civil courage was an equally

ambitious project to remove men from and then to provide them a suitable
substitute for the pleasures offered by the private realm. Pleasures pursued in
private seduced men into slighting their civic duty. Accordingly, Spartan legis
lation sought to "eliminat[e] to the greatest degree possible the last refuge of
family"
privacy the (p. 155). Rahe cites Montesquieu's observation that in

found,'"
ancient Greek "'marriage only friendship could be whereas "'love
mention'"
took a form which one dare not (p. 16). The aggressiveness with
which the Spartans pursued the latter served as another gauge by which they
distinguished themselves from the cities of their day (pp. 154-55). With this
Sparta sought to homogenize passion more thoroughly than had ever before
been effected. This effort to forge wholly public beings erred in attempting
simply to eradicate that which cannot be eradicated simply. This was most
Spartans'
evident in the practice of secretly hoarding gold and silver. Neverthe-
260 Interpretation
less, Rahe, alert to Sparta's excesses, judges her unmatched by the regimes of
her
courage"
day and
any other's at "promoting civil (pp. 161-62).
No less devoted to success at war was Periclean Athens, which Rahe shows
was considerably less liberal than is generally granted by current classical

scholarship, some elements of which have gone so far as to present Athens as
democracy."
the "primitive, premodern prototype of a working-class Rahe
exception"
finds Athens "no to Tocqueville's description of all the ancient de

masters'"
mocracies as, in the final count, "'aristocracies of (p. 192). Like the
Athens'
other cities of its day, democracy lived off and alongside its dominion
"modem"
over a vast number of slaves. While she might appear more by virtue
of her laxity in morals relative to other Greek cities, this impression needs to be
balanced against the fact that, like Sparta, she judged her citizens by the stan
piety"
dards of "[mjanliness and courage, public-spiritedness and (p. 194).

And, like the other Greek cities, Athens restricted women, wealth, and techno
logical innovation (pp. 198-217). Further, she pursued war in the name of
empire and was intolerant of religious infractions. Far from a model for modem
particularity"
democracy, Athens exhibited all the "fanatical by which the an

cient Greek republics were distinguished and from which they drew their virtue
and cruelty.
This unavoidably brief summary of book 1 fails to do justice to Rahe's

close, exhaustive analysis. In the endnotes he wages sustained battle with the
giants of classical scholarship. Against the Weberian and Marxist approaches to
ancient history practiced by Moses Finley and G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, respec
tively, Rahe offers Aristotle's regime analysis, in the light of which the frag
mentary states of both modem idealism and materialism appear. Economic,
"social,"
demographic, and geographic data are manifestly necessary and con

structive. But all are in the most important sense derivative of the politeia, of
who rales and for what purpose.
The very cogency of his case for embracing Aristotle raises questions re
garding Rahe's subsequent emphasis on the practice rather than the philosophy
of antiquity. To be sure, he by no means simply neglects the judgments passed
by the classical thinkers on the regimes of their day. Quite the

Yet he contrary.
tends to take, or at least to present, their professions largely at face value. He
tends not to focus as much as he might on the fact that his paradigm, Aristotle,
views ancient practice with politic reservations that are just as weighty as his
explicit endorsements. Hence Rahe is left to look largely to modem thought for
criticisms of Greek practice.
To Rahe's credit, he is well aware of and defends openly his focus on an

cient practice. "[Bjecause the ancient philosophers
really did content them
selves [quoting Priestley] 'with thinking with the wise and
acting with the
vulgar,'
it is perfectly possible to write a political

history of
any ancient regime
philosophy"
without making reference to (p. 234; emphasis in original). To

understand modem history requires a different approach. Modem practice can
not be understood absent our coming to grips with the philosophers of modern
"ideology,"
ity; for is driven by "popularized
philosophy,"
modem practice or
which has replaced religion as the source of those deepest notions adherence to
which defines and distinguishes a people.
Nevertheless, to focus on the relation of ancient practice and modem

theory
appears to presuppose that the self-understanding of the ancient practitioners,
combined with the critique of that understanding by the early modems, is suffi
cient for grasping republics ancient and modem. Is it? Need one board the train
of modem postulates to arrive at the most illuminating critique of ancient prac
tice? More precisely, are the limits and dignity of the ancient polis seen most
clearly from a perspective whose evaluative standard looks largely to the satis
faction of the desires for self-preservation and comfort?
Before beginning to attempt to answer these questions, fairness to Rahe
requires underscoring the fact that he shows himself to be fully cognizant of
Aristotle's distance from the participatory ethos of the ancient polis. But to this
theme he devotes no more than a few paragraphs (see pp. 217-18; 908, n.
181). Rather, his bent is to emphasize the self-understanding of the polis and
thinkers'
then to point to Aristotle's and other ancient apparent concurrence,

especially as regards the question of the rank of political activity. Thus his
portrait of republics ancient and modem is in danger of being read to present
the following dichotomy: Republican man stands at a crossroads. He may
the "city's freedom and
autonomy"
march down the ancient trail, where de

mand a bloodthirsty communitarianism and a worldview distinguished by its
particularity"
"fanatical (pp. 217-18). Or he can walk the smoother, lower,

soul-shrinking highway of the modem commercial republic, where happiness is
both more reliably insured and, for this reason, more prone to be nauseating for
its pedestrianism.
Oneshudders to think that these are the only alternatives for republican
orders. Needless to say, Rahe denies that this is the case; for he finds in Amer
ica the third and better road. I address his assessment of America in the latter
half of this essay. Presently my intention is to clarify elements of Aristotle's
republican vision left somewhat unremarkedowing to Rahe's choice of em
phasis. Again, what follows derives from my concern that Rahe's focus runs
the risk of leaving his readers with the impression that his exemplar's repub
practice."
licanism can be largely lumped together with "ancient
ARISTOTLE ON POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
Without doubt, Aristotle affirms man's political nature. Hence he likely

would have carefully (in fact, he is in some ways the source of) a
weighed
number of today's familiar critiques of the soul-stunting repercussions of the

depoliticization-through-commercialism on which modem republicanism de-
262 Interpretation
pends. Yet closer scrutiny suggests that he in no wise champions the wide
spread participation practiced by the democratic cities of his day. For Aristotle,
the polis, by nature, lies between the radical inclusiveness and exclusiveness
embraced by republics ancient and modem. Accordingly, between these two

polis"
extremes politika (the "affairs of the or "politics"), and therewith the

"polity,"
proper scope of political activity, lie. Thus also, his model republic,
marries elements of two defective regimes, democracy and oligarchy, in a man
ner hegemony
that guarantees the Through this mixing-balancing of
of neither.
the factions and their ruling claims, Aristotle's republic nurtures and requires
the ability to share in rule, that is, nurtures and requires political activity. So
mixing."
understood, his project can be called "political

This simultaneous embrace and rebuff of political participation comes to
first"
light in Aristotle's presentation of the "best and democracy, citizenship in
"best"
which is restricted to the demos the moderately wealthy farmers, who
laws"
"govern themselves in accordance with (Politics 1292a3-b23, 1305a27-
ll).9
32, 131 8a38 1 9b Rahe rightly makes much of the polemike of the ancient
farmers and links this to the fact that their wealth is in land. Aristotle agrees
that farmers herdsmen tend to military

as well as excellence (Politics 1319a20-
24). While the political limitations of martial virtue are made clear in his
life"
critique of Sparta, he grants that the "soldiering encourages self-restraint
and public-spiritedness (Politics 1271a42-bll; 1269b39-70a5; 1334a25-27;

1279a39-b4).
In addition to polemike, the citizens of Aristotle's best democracy possess
life"
moderate wealth. He finds in the "middling sort of (a way of life "possible
for (Politics 1295a25-
reason"
most to participate in"), a readiness to "obey

b27). While
citizens'
wealth and poverty threaten the willingness to share

"arrogance" "wish"
honors and offices (through and "envy"), the city's to be
equal"
composed of "similar and persons is best realized by the middling ele

ment (Politics 1262b7-10). Further, in the staticeconomy of antiquity, inheri
tance was the most likely avenue to wealth. This lessens the acquisitiveness and
brazenness all too often found in those whose wealth is newly acquired. Thus it
also reduces the friction often found between buyers and sellers. To this extent,
"affection"
the citizens more closely approximate the that requires
community
"political"
hence the to be ruled and to
rale"
and "capacity the capacity (Poli

tics 1277b 14- 16).
"praise"
But we overreach when we attempt to equate Aristotle's of the
"best" democrats'
demos with the ancient self-understanding. The chief reason
Aristotle elevates farmers is not their

participation-meriting sufficiency in polit
ical virtue, but their law-abidingness, which results not from their political
"leisure"
expertise simply primarily but rather to
or even a lack of that leads
them willy-nilly to "put the law in charge and assemble only for necessary
assemblies"
(Politics 1292b24-29).
In tension with Rahe's thesis that the ancient democrat views work and
wealth with disdain in comparison to political activity, a key factor in Aris

totle's elevation of the moderately wealthy farmers is his observation that this
group finds
pleasant"
"working more than participating in politics, provided

spoils"
that no "great may be obtained from ruling; "for the many strive more
honor"
for profit than for (Politics 13 18b 1 1-17). For Aristotle the crucial polit
"worse"
ical difference between the farmers and the other, types of demos is
that the latter artisans, merchants, and laborers are "always frequenting the
town." "easily"
Therefore
all"
marketplace and the "nearly of them are able to

assembly,"
"attend the farmers "scattered in the

country"
whereas are (Politics

1319a24-32). Because the great majority of the citizens are distant and occu
pied, the political offices can be filled only by those with the wealth for leisure.
While payment for office (practiced in Athens at the time of the Politics) can
remedy this, Aristotle rejects this on the grounds of its divisiveness (Politics
1304b26-30).
"defense"
On closer inspection, then, Aristotle's of popular participation
"best"
argues that the demos even the demos that governs least governs
best. He likewise restricts citizen participation in his polity and restrained oli
"multitude"
garchy. In the latter, a shares in rule and "law necessarily has
authority."
As in the best democracy, the rule of law in a moderate oligarchy is

the product of the fact that the majority of citizens lacks leisure (Politics
1293al2-19). Polity, the best practical regime, and the standard for improving
both democracy and oligarchy, is also constituted primarily of the moderately
limitations 1302a2-
wealthy; therefore similar on participation apply (Politics
15, 1320a20-24; 1294bl3-96b40).
In defense of Rahe's reading, it can be argued that these restrictions simul
"political"
taneously liberate. They increase truly participation by bolstering the

citizens'
capacity to liberate logos from passion in their quest to uncover and
enact justice in the city. In the best or mixed democracy, an accessible property
requirement and popular power over audits and elections produce a demos of
sufficient size and power to resist the harassments of the wealthy. While the
people pursue profit without oppression, the prohibition on payment for office
allows those among the wealthy who seek honor to satisfy themselves through
election to high office. The limits on both prevent either from turning their
political relation into one of masters and slaves. This mix of inclusion and
exclusion reflects both the limits and the dignity of politics. Political beings
"beasts"
merit neither the compelled nonparticipation enforced upon a pack of
things"
nor the unlimited simply to "do the

power that the people and the
"enjoy"
wealthy characteristically (Politics 1281M9-21, 1310al9-23).

Aristotle's best democracy, then, embraces neither simple majoritarianism
nor even the participation by the many in high office.So understood, his repub
lican vision unlike Greek republican practice cannot be so easily dismissed
by modem thought, for his republic goes no short distance toward moderating
Aris-
particularity"
the "fanatical of the cities of his day. Equally important,

264 Interpretation
totle's objections to the polis not only do not require but in fact largely reject
the fundamental premises underlying early modernity's critique of ancient prac
tice. But if Aristotle's republicanism can be lumped together with neither an
cient practice nor modem theory, where precisely does it stand?

To do full justice to his republican vision requires, according to Aristotle
philosophy,"
politics'
himself, "political on whose basis touchstone is no

Pericles' course"
longer Funeral Oration but, rather, the "natural the absolute

rale of the one or few of unqualified virtue (Politics 1282b 14-24). From the
philosophizing,"
standpoint of "one the political community is for the "sake of

in
actions."
noble Therefore, those preeminent "greater

political virtue merit a
illusions its likeli

city"
part in the (Politics 1279bl2-81a8). Harboring no as to
hood, Aristotle highlights the best city nonetheless. He does so with the intent
that we through reflecting on both the goodness and the infeasibility of the
course"
"natural will arrive at a seasoned grasp of the simultaneously noble

and problematic character of political life generally (Politics 1284a3-b34,
1288al7-29).
So seasoned, we can measure more accurately the extent to which Aristotle
Greeks'
endorses his fellow endorsement of political activity. On the one hand,
he argues that
truly political
activity ruling being and ruled, rather than strag
gling for mastery is the core of political education. As such, it both provides
for and results from blunted factionalism. The factions may come to moderate
their more extreme claims in light of a human possibility made visible to them
only through participation-education in a city that is, as Aristotle describes it,

mixed"
"finely (Politics 1294a30-94b39, 1252b28-30, 1253a30-40). While

he has been seen to concede the role and rank of institutions in moderate poli
tics, Aristotle challenges modern republicanism by denying the viability of a
simply institutional solution to the political problem. His republic serves, fos
ters, and depends
all,"
on political education, which, though "slighted by

"greatest"
stands as the instrument of political health (Politics 1310al2-14).
On the other hand, it is now apparent that too much is often read into Aris
totle's emphasis on the educational potential of political activity. Read rightly,
he lends scant succor to supporters of participatory republics, ancient or mod
em. In fact, his very defense of his best practical regime reveals most conspicu
ously his distance from the participatory ethos. While his moderate democracy
and oligarchy seek to balance the claims and powers of the rich and poor, in
"polity"
these factions, but
element,"
neither of rather the "middling domi

nates. Polity's moderation appears to owe most to its socioeconomic structure.
Its uniformity largely dispenses with the need to balance powers. While his
project to temper democracy and oligarchy depends for its effectiveness on its
"mixing,"
ability to educate the two most powerful factions in the benefits of
his polity neutralizes these groups through the numerical and martial
superiority
"mix"
of the heavy-armed, middling element.Moderate property, a of wealth
and poverty, makes political mixing most possible. Without the preeminence of
such a body, the attempt to balance opposing factions through education is

prone to instability (Politics 1304a38-b3). Polity's lessened dependence on po
litical education-participation is proportional to its fulfillment of the city's

"wish"
be "similar
persons,"
to composed of and equal without which there is

"affection."
insufficient sameness to promote civic In addition, polity's wide
spread yet moderate wealth deflects the many from an excessive, and thus
apolitical, participation in politics(Politics 13 18b 14- 17).

Aristotle's aim to limit participation through satisfying acquisitiveness ap
pears to move his project much closer to that of his modem republican suc
cessors. Yet the two differ markedly in their visions. The primacy of the
course,"
"natural or unqualified excellence, not of life, liberty, and property,

"certain"
animates Aristotle's project, which seeks the ascendancy of that mul
titude whose way of life renders it militarily powerful and simultaneously re

strained in and satisfied with its political participation. Polity satisfies
"strive"
acquisitiveness to the extent that it allows the many to unharassed after
"profit," "honor."
which they desire more than At the same time, it restrains
the acquisitiveness of both rich and poor by opposing to both a middle class
"mixes"
whose wealth is largely static. Polity satisfaction and restraint with the
view to limiting those who possess merely freedom and/or wealth to a level of
participation proportional to their political contributions. In so doing, it at

tempts to provide the restrained political arena required for virtue to be heard,
and perhaps, to some extent, to rale.
Accordingly, polity is the best practical alternative not because it is the most
inclusive and secure of regimes though this it is but first and foremost be
cause its domestic health and peace buy for the naturally best the opportunity to
exercise their virtue on the city's behalf. For Aristotle the political contribution
"prudence"
par excellence is or practical wisdom. As is tme of all the Aris

totelian virtues, prudence exists in activity; prudence, to be, must be practiced.
Polity allows the one or few who excel in prudence to exercise their virtue, that
is, to be virtuous fully, and for this reason polity ascends. In the opportunity it
opens to the influence of virtuepolity resembles the rale of the "god-like"; it
reaches toward what is for Aristotle the most divine or best regime simply
(Politics 1284a3-15, 1284b25-34).
Aristotle appreciates fully the obstacles to the rule of prudence presented by
the polis. Nevertheless, he deems it the city's natural inclination to desire to be
mled by the true God. All communities, he observes in the very first sentence
of the Politics, aim at what appears good. This aim necessarily includes the
desire to know the good. Stated differently, man's directedness toward the po
well,"
litical community is explained fully and finally by his desire to "live and
hence presupposes his desire to know what the good life is. The polis, by
nature, intends to leam and practice virtue and to know the truth about the
source and
ordering principle of the cosmos (Politics 1328b4-22, 1325M6-31;
Nicomachean Ethics 1094a27-bl2).
266 Interpretation
In this light, Aristotle's republican vision presents a city animated neither by

antiquity's fanatical particularism nor modernity's tepid
universalism.10
For Ar
istotle the political animal remains too much an animal to prosper from unre
stricted political participation. At the same time, the soul refuses simply to be
identified with and satisfied through a hedonist calculus. Because human nature
is mixed, so must be the healthy city. Constmcted thus, Aristotle's polity offers
itself as a third way between republics pitiless and prosaic.
THE FLIGHT FROM POLITICS
In Aristotle's appraisal of Greek practice we find a core that without deny

ing the differences among the classical thinkers represents the general direc
ancients'
tion of classical political philosophy. The compass guiding the

course"
appraisals of the cities of their day is the "natural or classical natural
right, the political culmination of which is the unqualified rale of unqualified
virtue, or the best regime. Against this

backdrop, modernity's critique of the
polis comes more clearly into focus. Again, it is no more accurate to treat the
modems as a simple unity than it is do so with the ancients. Nevertheless, Rahe
reveals a nucleus of shared principles on the basis of which all the seminal
modem thinkers reject the ancient polis.
The period between the death of the polis and the birth of modernity, the
Middle Ages, saw the ancient view of man as a political and rational animal
carried on by Catholicism (p. 217). Also in agreement with the ancients, the
Christian Middle Ages held science to be higher than a mere means to the
estate"
"relief of man's (p. 98). That these classical tenets survived and even
prospered after Christianity tramped paganism was not accidental. As

Nietzsche observes, original Christianity is popularized Platonism. Christianity
did for all men what Platonism had done only for a politically impotent few; it
demoted the status of family, city, this-worldly ambition, and political activity
(p. 219). Man is first and foremost not the self-legislating citizen but God's
obedient subject. His lies less in
loving his city than in loving his
completion
neighbor. And his neighbor

merely his is
fellow citizen, but whoever is in
not
need (cf. the parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10: 25-37). The
universal
blessings and requirements of a God who is no respecter of nations became the
new dispensation, on whose basis wholehearted devotion to the polity was no
longer defensible.
If the Church allowed through its spiritual gates the Greek gift of trust in
logos, it soon discovered that with it came the factionalism that had so riven the
ancient republics. Rahe
Gibbon: in the Church '"[t]he
cites
study of philosophy
devotion'"
the parent of
. . . was as often
heresy as of (p. 222). In fact,
fidelity
to logos produced even worse factionalism in the Church than it had
in the
polis; for, "[i]n a world in which salvation is universally held to depend on an
faith,"
acceptance of the true issues of heresy and scriptural interpretation "are
death."
of greater concern than mere life and As it had been for the pagans,
"logos turned out to be a double-edged sword so that, if speech and reason
brought Christians together, argument and disputation conspired to drive them

apart"
(p. 223).
Moreover, given the character and ferocity of certain tenets of the faith,
philosophy while ostensibly condoned and even welcomed to an extent there
tofore unseen was countenanced and commissioned solely as theology's

handmaiden. No less a mind than Thomas Aquinas openly defended the pious
view that "'whatever is discovered in the other sciences must be condemned as
truth' "
entirely false if it is repugnant to the of Christian revelation. In the final

count, philosophy during the Christian Middle Ages was at least as subjugated
as before (p. 228).

When the founders of early modem thought looked at the marriage of Jeru
salem and Athens, they found first among its offspring pointless carnage and
intellectual darkness. They found the Cmsades and the trial of Galileo. Had
fanatical particularism fallen, only to be replaced by fanatical universalism?
This was the question raised by the early modems, and its suppressed premise
would become the lens through which they would focus on and reject both the
polis and the Church.
That the revolutionary intentions of the early modems are nearly invisible to
our generation is owing to the success of the school of thought according to
which historical change results from impersonal forces rather than from the
thoughts and deeds of individuals and parties (p. 234). To paraphrase and sum
marize this school, "There are no great men, only mediocre men who find
movements."
themselves at the helm during great historical Allied to this no
tion is radical historicism, which has produced a consensus on the point that
rational self-consciousness the means to and end of liberation from our ep
och's unique presuppositions is impossible. Be the barrier class, status, or

age,"
"the spirit of the there is no escaping culture's cave (p. 235). Were this
set of blinders not sufficient to obscure modernity's revolutionary ends, we find

ourselves confronted by another obstacle. Rahe provides exhaustive historical
evidence that the early modems wrote esoterically; they were dissemblers
(pp. 233-48). Here
works'
whose pious surface camouflages an impious core
he signals his debt to Leo Strauss, who first gleaned both the fact of and
grounds for early modernity's covert operation (p. 918, n. 21).

Machiavelli launched the modem attack on Christianity and its classically
inspired trust in logos. His critique of moral reason, in turn, paved the way for
a wholly new species of republicanism (pp. 228-29). Crucial to the break with
humanity"
antiquity was his replacement of proper pride with the "principles of

(pp. 260-74). While the ancients granted the value of the feeling of humanity
or pity, they did not count it among the virtues. But, from Machiavelli on,
humanity came to be regarded as a virtue. This elevation, along with the justi-
268 Interpretation
fication for the new science, required a new understanding of virtu, which
became mere "virtuosity an instrument fashioned for the attainment of 'secu

well-being'"
rity and (p. 262).

Grounding the promotion of humanity and demotion of pride is Machia
velli's denial of the ancient view that the quest for fame points beyond itself to
the cultivation of the virtue for which men achieve fame. He "severs the link
between the beautiful (pp. 264-65). This
good"
or the noble and the decoup

ling derives from his analysis of desire. Because desire is insatiable, self-re
straint is finally unsatisfying. Hence the notion that happiness consists in the
cultivation of the moral virtues is a sham. Virtue and happiness consist not in
limiting but in satisfying limitless desires. On this basis, the life of unceasing
"acquisition" truth"
ascends. The "effectual of the matter is that men divide not
between the immoral and the moral, but between the ambitious and the fearful.
Logos is not naturally drawn to discover and communicate the just and good,
but is by nature an instmment of the domination required to satisfy insatiable
desire in a world where the good things are few and their would-be captors
many.
If Machiavelli is the fountainhead of the project to bring the effectual truth

of matters moral and political to the attention of thinking men, significant ele
ments of modernity emerged later and sometimes as the fmit of fundamental

disagreement with the Florentine. Rahe directs us to Montaigne, who, in build
ing on Machiavelli's foundation, dislodges from its facade the one stone still
shared with antiquity the exaltation of the quest for glory. Montaigne's tren
chant critique of heroic virtue would become the cornerstone of modernity's

misgivings about both the Christian martyr and the ancient warrior (p. 268).
Heroism and self-restraint, classical as well as Christian, are diseases of the
soul bred of an unjustified and unjustifiable pride. This pathology has been the
primary source of man's inhumanity toward himself and others throughout his
tory. Better fitting man's nature understood here as his desire for security and
"
well-being are not courage and self-sacrifice but 'mildness and ease of dis
position.'"
The latter reveal their worth when the good comes

properly to be
identified
useful,"
with "the and when logos accordingly focuses on the advan

tageous. In this view, the cruelty concomitant with the ancient warrior's virtue
now comes to light as humanity's worst vice (pp. 269-72).
The success of the new man, the man of "natural
mildness,"
will be bol
stered by modem science. So argues Francis Bacon. By making life longer and
more comfortable, science promises to dilute religion and the older, austere
virtue. So constituted, the new man, whom Bacon labels a
'"citizen of the
world,'"
will become more sensitive not

only to his own and well-
security
being but also to that of his fellow citizens and mankind generally. The bless
ings brought by modem science will themselves educate men in the principle
"humanity"
and practice of (p. 279). Moreover, reasons Bacon, the
weakening
religion
of and, with it, of scorn for this life's happiness will
increase
men's seriousness about their lives here and thus render them more fearful,
pacific, and law-abiding. Because the project to persuade men to care more
about this world requires first and foremost that this world become more hospi
table, Bacon deems advances in medicine critical. While one result of these
material advances will be to deafen the many to calls to hard and dangerous
virtue, the longings of the few are less easily satisfied. To them Bacon offers
not only the Machiavellian enticement of political mastery over fortuna but also
the promise of the scientific conquest of nature (pp. 280-81).
Equally a philosopher of will and an enemy of Christian zeal is Descartes,

whose repudiation of heroic virtue and religious piety is evinced by his refusal
to cede the distinctions traditionally made among the love of God, the desire
for honor, and the base desires for wealth and bodily pleasure. This refusal
arises from his denial that body is finally subordinate to soul (p. 286). Because
he finds body to be the source of all desire, his account of the soul becomes
is accordingly subsumed under Des-
physiology,"
"merely a branch of which

physics"
cartes's "new and revolutionary mathematical (p. 287). A soul whose
unity supervenes its subordination to body can know no principle of hierarchy
by which to order the virtues. Hence the generosite with which Descartes re
places greatness of soul (megahpsuchia) cannot claim the latter's architectonic

quality,"
status. Rather, generosite is "an inborn an "overpowering lust for

mastery."
It is not virtue but replaces virtue. It is the master passion and, as
such, the final source of resolute resistance against the periodic chaos caused
by the other passions.
Rahe cautions us lest we take the surface for the core. Descartes argues
explicitly that generosite is the source and spring of man's willingness and
things,' " "
ability '"to do great and the greatest of deeds is 'doing good to other
is
men.'"
When goodness measured by the gauge of security and well-being,
scientific progress emerges as man's greatest benefactor. Generosite inspires

the work that both advances science and turns it to the relief of man's estate.
For fear that such humanitarian rhetoric will lull us into the self-satisfaction
Descartes promises, Rahe calls our attention to the fact that, at bottom, gene
rosite "is the hard, unrelenting, willful, aristocratic self-assertion at the heart of
humanity."
modernity's soft, democratic As Rahe reads it, Descartes's gene
from the lust for

virtu"
rosite is Machiavelli's "savage turned empire to the
quest to rule nature through science (pp. 289-90).

truth"
Equally beholden to Machiavelli's turn to the "effectual is John

Locke, whose realism finds that '"power and riches, nay virtue itself, are val
happiness,'" '"enjoyments'"
that is, to this life's

ued only as conducing to our
(p. 293). Accordingly, austere notions of virtue cannot be relied on to spawn
Required instead is
action.'"
a system of and politics

'"conformity of morality
that secures each man's pursuit of his private enjoyments. The full import of
this change comes to light when we recall that Locke inaugurates the use of the
"soul."
term "self in place of The self is distinguished by an egocentrism that,

270 Interpretation
idiosyncratic in its
in the absence of a hierarchy of pleasures, is necessarily
content of
quest for satisfaction. The very impossibility of consensus on the
happiness elevates the pursuit of happiness. But for Locke the pursuit of happi
leads nowhere. The pursuit of

ness must remain a pursuit, one that finally " 'uneasiness' "
happiness is less the quest for the good than the flight from the
death"
of pain and "the (p. 294). Life in Locke's republic reveals
prospect of
itself to be "the joyless quest

quoting Leo Strauss's memorable description
From this, virtue comes to light as bourgeois virtue; or, as Locke
joy.""
for
"
states it, self-preservation provides the solid ground on which to 'regulate our
morality'"
religion, politics, and (pp. 294-95).

Crucial to his attempt society on solid ground is Locke's
to reestablish civil
stratagem regarding Christianity. While his professed target is not Christian

"priestcraft,"
faith but his critique of the latter eventuates in a Christianity far
different from what it had been theretofore. By steps it becomes a "religion of
humanity"
in the "inadequacy of God's
provision"
grounded view of the for

condone" flesh,"
man, "inclined to tolerate and even certain "weaknesses of the
focussed primarily on improving "man's estate in this
world"
and (pp. 301-3).

Appealing to the Protestant emphasis on individual conscience, Locke succeeds
in diluting the doctrine of justification by faith to the requirement of mere
sincerity. In so doing, his aim ultimately is not to eradicate but to soften Chris
tianity in order that it might no longer oppose but come to prop the new moral
ity of humanity. The engine driving Locke's project as well as his instrumental
biblical hermeneutics is his employment of reason as the final standard of both
the meaning and the soundness of revelation.
Should that project succeed, the new man of Locke's new order no longer
will be seduced by dreams of heroic virtue nor inflamed with religious zealotry.
He will embrace the "cautious hedonism, the mild skepticism, and the genial
tolerance" "busy"
generated by commerce. His will be a life, one engrossed by
the quest to improve this world and hence less than "zealous for salvation in the
come"
world to (pp. 314-17). Lockean man will echo the critique of classical
virtue later offered by Montesquieu, loathes the
bourgeois,'"
who
ferocity of ancient life,
preferring the '"timid who devotes himself not to a bloodthirsty
particularism but to pacific and
homogenizing commerce and technological
progress. The new man's virtues consist not in a
haughty rejection of money
making, not in an inhumane for the
contempt
body and this life, but in a
pmdent frugality and a softness in manners. In Locke's and Montesquieu's new
world commerce replaces war and as the primary means
slavery of acquisition.
Equally important, though not stated explicitly, the new

science, by protecting
the material life of the many from unconcerned nature, will also protect the
intellectual life of the few from overly-concerned religion.
No less a midwife to the birth of the new world is Thomas Hobbes, whom
Rahe credits with
founding "a new science of politics aimed at
altogether"
eliminating
politics (pp. 364-66). Building the work of
on
Grotius, Selden
Descartes and, above all, Bacon, Hobbes continues the modem attack on the
classical trust in logos. Because reason is but the "scout and
spy"
of desire, and
because the latter is inconstant, the ordinary terms of moral discourse have
different and often opposed meanings for different men and even for the same
man when later swayed by a contrary passion. Moral reason, at once fettered
and fitful, can thus serve neither to found nor to maintain commonwealths. Not
reason primarily but the fear of violent death drives men to establish
singly or
commonwealths; for only fear can fully focus the mind and smother the other
passions (p. 376).
Hobbes's critique of moral reason serves to delegitimate political activity
and bolster absolute sovereignty. His program to escape politics looks to Ma
chiavelli's view of human nature, but is finally more optimistic, because it
marries to the Florentine's dissection of desire Bacon's aim to elicit true excel
lence logos from piety and politics to science and the technical arts.
by turning
Human perfection is wrought through yoking logos to method. Neither the
great-souled nor the pious man, but, rather, the scientist-inventor is Hobbes's
and modernity's paragon of excellence. Here Rahe brings to light nicely the
teleology"
"hidden beneath Hobbes's (rhetorical)

explicit repudiation of teleol
reason,"
ogy. Hobbes extols "calculating, industrious, scientific praises the

civility," consistency"
"virtues of and never slackens in his "demand for (pp.

395-97).
These fundamental Hobbesian principles Locke both adopts and modifies.
So amended, they would come in time to inform the work of the American
Founders (p. 397). But if the Leviathan is the raw material and the Two Trea
tises the finished product, the effect of both on the American founding is seen
clearly only appraising the workmanship of a thinker relatively unknown

after
and, to the extent that he is known, misinterpreted James Harrington (p.

409). Rahe's Harrington serves as something of a mediator between Hobbes
and Locke. Harrington grants Hobbes's major premises but rejects absolute
sovereignty and champions popular self-government. From his defense of the

latter, he is routinely read as a classical republican. This reading Rahe rebuts.
Harrington's Oceana proscribes public debate for the same reason that Hobbes
prescribes absolute monarchy. Both aspire to eliminate divisive public dispute
over the advantageous, just, and good. That is, both attempt to eliminate poli
tics, to abolish "the middle ground that had been the central feature of self-
times"
government in ancient (pp. 414-15).

Rahe declares Harrington the first patron of self-government to erect a re
public independent of the ancient premise "that one can inculcate civic virtue
education."
and public-spiritedness through His republic relies on judiciously

constructed institutions to wring the common interest from individual selfish
ness (p. 421). In fact, these institutional means (e.g., secret ballots and the ban
on debate) intend to encourage men to vote their interests and hence to lessen
in their souls the weight and, with it, the divisiveness of moral-political con-
272 Interpretation
Hume and Montes

cems (pp. 422-26). In all this, Harrington, along with
to the
quieu and contrary to Aristotle looks to "political
" 'structure' "
of government, as the source of its ruling principle (pp. 440-41).
reservations with
Locke likewise embraces Hobbes's ends while harboring
Locke later comes
his means (p. 463). Initially adopting Hobbes's Erastianism,
to champion religious toleration along with constitutional monarchy and the
right to rebel. Never doubting the political deadliness of religious strife, he

nonetheless eventually decides that religious persecution, not diver religious
sity, is the chief danger. Accordingly, toleration, not state supremacy over holy
dogma, proves the better method for preventing disputes over the health of
man's immortal soul from spreading sickness to the body politic (pp. 459ffi).
Because he expects religious liberty to end violent religious straggle, Locke can
dismiss the need for Harrington's program to eliminate the "middle ground of
(p. 473). Political activity will be made for the

politics"
finally safe world
because religious freedom will declaw politics.

Examination of other key elements of Locke's project reveals the depth of
his debt to Hobbes. On the issue of the role and rank of political education
Locke breaks with Harrington, joining Hobbes to insist that a foundation be
laid in public opinion sanctioning the employment of modernity's institutional
mechanisms (pp. 478-79). This doctrinal foundation consists chiefly in the
propositions later deemed self-evidently tme by the Declaration of Indepen
dence (p. 479). Locke also sides finally with Hobbes's critique of moral-politi
cal reason. Because reason is bound boundless desire, men cannot exercise
to
" power' "
objectively the 'executive that inheres equally in each in the state of
nature (pp. 496-99). For this cause men flee nature through art they con
struct civil society. Hence the relevant political sense in which Locke no less
equal"
than Hobbes deems men naturally "free and follows from nature's fail
ure to endow logos sufficiently to establish a natural capacity for mle.
Nature is no less niggardly in the economic realm. Man is left largely alone
to provide for his necessities. His natural neediness permits, in fact, hallows
the emancipation of the acquisitive instincts (p. 501). With the fall of the value
of nature's supply rises the dignity of human labor. Value owes

virtually all to
labor, and the labor of each man's body is and can be his alone. Hence Locke
reasons that man "'has a property in his own
person.'"
In fact, because it is "in

person,"
his own rather than in nature, that man finds

what is truly valuable,
"person"
his is property par excellence is that which "
himself"
'nobody has any right
to but (p. 502). Accordingly, we discover at the
pinnacle of Locke's
teleology the '"industrious and
rational,'"
whose conquest of nature with a

view to comfortable self-preservation is the end
in whose service politics is
legitimated (pp. 504-8). While the current fashion in
scholarship is to read
Locke's teaching on property as proof of his bondage to
the interests of the
English upper class, Rahe's careful account finds Locke's
overriding concern is
for the welfare, not of the rich and idle few, but of
working men and women
(pp. 514-18).
Rahe argues that Locke's chief intentions redirecting thumos toward acqui
sition as part and parcel of the larger project to pacify men through trade;
replacing guidance from moral reason with
calculating reason; elevating and
labor over political

activity to some extent made their way into the colonies
during his tenure on the Board of Trade (pp. 519-20). Rahe also offers exten
sive testimony about the depth and breadth of Locke's intellectual leverage on
the continent. From

Blackstone, Sidney, Trenchard
and Gordon, Bolingbroke,
and Priestley to Hutcheson, Smith, and Hume, there was, despite their impor
tant differences, general agreement regarding the essential rectitude of Locke's
program (pp. 530-39). Although Harrington English republicanism, it
spawned
force"
was Locke who would become its "dominant intellectual (p. 535).
As noted, Rahe is well aware of the differences among the above-mentioned
thinkers and between them and Locke. Most notable are the misgivings of
Hume and Montesquieu about the doctrinairism of Locke's project. If Locke
and early modernity generally look to avoid the strife that they suspect super
venes trust in man's capacity to distinguish the advantageous, just, and good,
Locke also enunciates a moral-political vision whose universality serves as the

touchstone and thus as the potential accuser and subverter of existing orders.
To the dangers inherent in the rise of ideology Rahe finds Hume the first to be
alert. Along with Montesquieu, Hume seeks to restore somewhat the legitimacy
and dignity of the particularism that is inseparable from civic identity. Yet they
differ with Locke less over fundamental ends than over the choice of means.
While they accept and echo Locke's contention that consent is the source of
political legitimacy, both look to instill in modem republicanism the flexibility

or prudence that they deem a prerequisite to political health (pp. 536-40).
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
Where do the American Founders stand in the debate over republicanism
between classical antiquity and early modernity? To this question Rahe devotes
Prudence."
book 3, entitled "Inventions of In the pre-Revolutionary colonies he

finds Locke's influence massive. Between 1760 and 1776 Locke's work was
not only the most read and quoted by colonial politicians but was also popular
to remarkably high degree among the Protestant clergy. Such was his power
a
during this momentous period for the colonies that even some Loyalists found it
necessary and advantageous to appeal to his authority (pp. 556-57). Rahe
guides us through the list of the notables of the time who echo Locke's key
premises. Among them are no less than Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Mason,
Wilson, Morris, and Paine. Moreover, Locke's language found its way into a
number of state constitutions (pp. 558-66).
Crucial among the premises assented to by the leading lights of the time was
"burden"
the view that politics is at best an instrumental good, a to be endured
not for its own sake but in order better to protect the primary realm of human
274 Interpretation
and happiness the household and private affairs. With this the Found
activity
accorded politics preemi
ers appear to reject the basis on which the ancients
nence. As Paine puts it, '"government, even in its best state, is but a necessary
(pp. 562-66).
evil'"
Yet the Framers aspirations. How did great

also entertained lofty political
believed in
politics'
ambition take hold in the souls of men who ostensibly

status? Rahe concludes that these longings were kindled by ancient
secondary
which taught the Founders "what it meant to aspire to political great
examples,
ness"
(p. 570). John Adams detected a classical element in the '"revolution

novus ordo sechrum. Thomas Jefferson thought it fitting to
principles'"
of the
include Aristotle's and Cicero's works among those "'elementary books of
right'"
public that support the Declaration. That the two men could make these
claims owes in part to the fact that their institution of a modem republic as an
itself "a profoundly

act"
improvement on the ancient model was political (p.

569).
At the same time, Rahe finally rejects J. G. A. Pocock's influential inter
" "
'flight from
modernity,'
pretation of the American Revolution as a that is, as

"
one part 'of the revival in the early modem West of the ancient ideal of homo
politicus.'" humanism'"
Rahe minces no words. The "'civic ascribed to the
Britain and America of this period is largely "a figment of the scholarly imag
ination"
(pp. 569-70). Few on either side of the Atlantic judged the highest life
to fall to the fully committed citizen. At the time, Rahe finds Rossiter,
same
Bailyn, Appleby, and Diggins no less in taking the opposite tack of

mistaken
denying any ancient influence on the Founders. Moreover, Rahe's reading of

Locke and subsequent demonstration of his influence in the colonies leave little
to justify Gordon Wood's view that the founding established an "'essentially
anti-capitalistic' "
order animated by the republican ideal of individual sacrifice
whole.'" Arendt'
for the "'greater good of the Nor can Hannah s case stand
end'"
Rahe's scrutiny. For Arendt the "'ultimate of the Revolution was the
" 'freedom' " "
"participatory of the Greek polis 'and the constitution of a public

' "
space where freedom would appear.
Yet Rahe finds Wood's and Arendt's readings plausible to the extent that
both discern the guiding role the ancients played for our Founders. Antiquity
provided a model of nobility that inspired fortified the Americans as they
and
undertook the daunting action that was the founding. Rahe's

key point is that
founding"
the "very act of America "was a tacit assertion that some men
with"
really
are political animals endowed the requisite logos"
"capacity for (pp
570-72).
Here we arrive at what for Rahe is the core of America's identity. On the
one hand, the Founders granted the import ofboth the humanitarian critique of
the polis and Hobbes's criticism of politics generally. Their new order would
thus establish the securing of comfortable
self-preservation and its prerequisites
as the end to which politics would serve as
means. On the other hand
they
"were steeped in the classics, and they felt the force of the ancient
example,
which taught the simple, as opposed to the instmmental, goodness of free

dom a goodness that both potentiates and, in turn, evinces itself fully through
"man's capacity for
vernance."
self-go Accordingly, while the new republic

would honor first man's tool-making ability, it would allow and even foster
liberty"
within limits "political political participation classically understood
beyond"
as well. In so doing, the Founders "silently passed Locke's first prin
"traditional Whig political

architecture"
ciples. They also reevaluated in light of
their conviction that institutions need not

merely for, but
substitute could in fact
also conduce to, the election of competent leaders (pp. 571-72).
This reevaluation of institutionalism yielded the American scheme of separa

tion of powers, which "seeks to vindicate man's capacity for self-government
by teaching him to acknowledge the limits of that capacity and to conduct his
accordingly."
affairs Beholden to the modem understanding of equality and its

concomitant doubt concerning man's ability to overcome private passion and
serve the common good, separation of powers distrusts politics and thus limits
the scope of statesmanship. At the same time, separation of powers is expressly
character"
"aristocratic and classical in in assuming the power of logos in at

ground"
least a few to whom it opens an opportunity analogous to the "middle

of the polis. In providing this occasion for the display of public virtue, "it
harnesses the pride of the country's most ambitious men in service to the public
good." "indirect" ancients'
paide
Rahe deems this an version of the "civic

Like its predecessor, the new republic seeks, albeit gently, to transform pride
exalted."
and ambition "into something considerably more To the degree that it

succeeds in educating and ennobling the players on the national stage, separa
tion of powers also educates the people in "the most effectual way: by the
emulation."
shining examples it holds up for So understood, the United States

resemblance"
bears "a certain, undeniable to the ancient mixed regime, albeit

way"
in a "strange, convoluted it strikes the mean between Hobbes's "en

despotism"
lightened and classical republicanism (pp. 599-602).
Rahe finds an additional classical element provided by the Supreme Court.
The Court fulfills a condition that Socrates, in the Republic, thinks indispens
able to good government: the Constitution empowers the federal judiciary with
a view to guaranteeing that within the regime there will remain an element that
embraces "the same understanding (logos) of the regime that the lawgiver pos
laws."
As such, the Court "contributes

powerfully"
sessed when he framed its

(p. 609). Accordingly, while
education"
citizens'
to the "political modem re

souls,'"
publicanism does not take as its task Plato's "'caring for America
"perfection" "stealthily"
encourages the soul's and by "indirection while openly
ends"
pursuing less exalted (pp. 615-16).

glance"
In sum, only "the unsuspecting judges the United States to be a

interests"
mere "congeries of special rather than a "people united by a common

"unsuspecting"
Mad-
(p. 650). Against the impression, Rahe both
cause"
cites
276 Interpretation
ison's denial that '"there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-govern
ment,' "
and Hamilton's affirmation that there is a
"
'portion of virtue and honor
"'virtue'"
mankind.'"
John Adams identifies the people's as

among Quincy
fidelity to the principles '"proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, and
that the American

Constitution'"
embodied in the (pp. 602-3). Rahe argues
people, in giving flesh to the Declaration's spirit, bestowed on the Constitution

"a sacred authority limiting their prerogatives, directing their common activ
This they did acting on the con
citizens."
ities, and forming their character as

viction that "man's capacity for self-government can be vindicated only if it can
be
purpose"
shown to serve a higher (p. 604).

"justice"
What is this higher purpose? What is the content of the that Mad
government?"
ison in Federalist 5 1 asserts is the "end of What kind or rank of
"common
cause"
or common good does Rahe find in America's principles hid

den from "the unsuspecting glance"? In what does American popular virtue
"indirectness"
consist? Our reflection on the very with which the regime pro
motes its ends points to some answers.
THE ENDS OF THE CONSTITUTION
Ranking the class of ends and level of virtue that can be promoted ade
quately through indirection requires our first examining more closely the "mid
ground"
dle that the Constitution allows and encourages the political activity
Framers'
of the national office-holders. (Recall that Rahe finds the justification
for opening this ground to be the view that modem like ancient republics de
pend on some degree of public and private virtue, and in this justification he
purports to find at the founding at least the remnants of classical republican
ism.) To begin, while the Founders may have disagreed with the ancients con
cerning the nature and extent of the virtues republics require,

they and the
philosophers whom they followed may be said to have made a necessity of a
species of virtue. Rahe, following Martin Diamond's seminal work on The
Federalist, recounts the modest but stable virtues bred gently by the influence
on manners and mores of life in an extended, commercial republic with a multi
plicity of interests and sects (p. 1048, n. 1; pp. 573-616).

In Federalist 10, Madison declares "regulating"
"various
interests"
to be the
task"
legislation."
"principal of "modem This task ascends in the shadow of the
prior rise of
democratized, commerce. The latter, unlike ancient
modem, or
commerce, affects the behavior, nature, opinions and habits of the
majority to
an extent heretofore unachieved.
Further, while democratized commerce incul
cates commercial habits in the people generally, it serves also
to focus their
commercial allegiances on the "various interests" into which
they have been
fragmented, thereby downplaying awareness of and conflict over
amounts of
property. The democratization of commerce exercises both a
uniting and a dis-
persing function, and the interaction of both is instrumental in remedying the

effects of faction.
For the multiplicity of interests scheme to succeed, individuals must focus
on local pursuits and away from potentially fatal struggles over basic or regime
principles. The fragmentation required for liberty and served by multiplicity
cannot exercise its intended effect in the absence of "opposite and rival inter
ests,"
is,
acquisitiveness.12
that widespread This, the root of the "most common

durable"
and source of faction, is also prerequisite to remedying faction's ef
interests"
fects. The channeling of "rival redresses man's general lack of "better
motives."
If natural selfishness cannot be simply negated, government, "the

human
nature,"
greatest of all reflections on must seek instead to moderate
selfishness through multiplying its foci (Federalist 55). The coalition process is
citizens'
driven by the recognition that, to satisfy their selfish aims, they must
come down to the brokerage level, at which a majority composed of diverse

interests, religions, and geographies can agree. Creating unity out of extraordi
nary multiplicity compels, for what need be only selfish reasons, the modera
tion of the most extreme claims of all. While Madison and the other leading
"other-regarding"
Framers saw the need for virtue in the people and their repre
sentatives, the durability of selfishness appears to be the foundation on which
Federalist 10 rests. Molded by such circumstances, the citizenry can be ex

"inhuman"
pected to do fewer heroic and cruel deeds through either an desire

"enthusiasm."
for glory or religious Supplied in place of high and flighty virtue
are commerce's lower, more sober assets, e.g., industry, mildness, and thrift.
With Diamond's interpretation of Federalist 10 Rahe largely agrees. But we
have seen that he also underscores the latitude of discretion fostered by separa
tion of powers and multiplicity of interests In opening the national

and sects.
arena to the possibility of statesmanship, the Constitution both presupposes the
capacity for, and in mm seeks to nurture, man's use of logos to discern and
communicate the advantageous, just, and good. To this extent, the United
States embraces the central tenet of classical republicanism. Stated simply, the
infeasibility of direct democracy in a country America's size makes representa
tion necessary; representation, in turn, makes possible the democratic selection

aristoi."
of Jefferson's "natural
Because they recognized the new republic's need of the "service of an aris
men,"
tocracy of knowledgeable and prudent the Founders took further steps to
ensure that such would be rewarded and hence cultivated. This, at least, is the
way Rahe reads the Constitution's protection of copyrights for authors (p. 712).
the constitutional passage causes me to wonder about the precise
My reading of
"aristocracy"
character of the natural anticipated and provided for by the Con
stitution. Article One, Section Eight, Clause Eight provides Congress with the
power "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for
limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Discoveries"
Writings and (emphasis mine). Might Rahe's description of such

278 Interpretation
men as "knowledgeable and

prudent"
be rendered more precisely as Locke's

thus.13
"industrious and rational"? Tocqueville appears to read it

This denies neither Rahe's case that the constitutional distribution of "honors
and
offices"
establishes a mild paideia for modem-republican man nor his ob
servation that our first six presidents all urged Congress to establish a national
university with the view to perpetuating our political institutions through the
teaching of our political creed (pp. 712-14). My question concerns not the
being but the content of the new education for the new man. Honoring those
arts"
who contribute to the "progress of science and useful appears to look first
and foremost to encouraging that yoking of logos to technai, to "science and
that Rahe shows lies at the heart of Hobbes's enterprise (pp. 395ff.).
arts,"
the
Rahe has likewise demonstrated that such elevation of technical expertise is
quintessentially modem.
In accord with my reading ofClause Eight, Tocqueville expects citizens in a

beauty,"
modem democratic republic "habitually to put use before whereas
"contempt for Rahe

practice."14
those of aristocratic regimes generally exhibit a

"elegance"
finds Jefferson's view of the political relation between and useful
cities,"
ness stated powerfully in the Virginian's critique of "great which he

"
considers 'pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True,
they nourish some of the elegant arts, but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere,
and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would
be my
choice'"
(p. 726).
I have further concerns about Rahe's thesis insofar as it posits the identity or
atleast affinity of the activities of legislators in republics ancient and Ameri

can. We have seen that American republicanism issues from modem natural-
rights doctrine, which, by definition, sets limits to government power. Federalist

Founders'
10 lists
object"
as the "great "securing] the public good and private

rights,"
and it assimilates the public good to "the permanent and aggregate
interests
community."
of the Nowhere in this what has become, for us, the

most influential of the Federalist essays does Madison, the Father of the
Constitution, utter a word about
perfecting ethical virtue or
saving souls. While
the Constitution's Preamble its intention to "establish
states
justice,"
justice
comes into sight through the lens of private, prepolitical rights and public "in
terests."
American justice appears to be the prevention of injustice (see Politics

1280a31-1281a8; but cf. Rahe, pp. 777ff).
To be sure, Rahe in several passages

powerfully presents the case for, as he
puts it, "the restricted, Lockean character of the
American understanding of
'justice and the common good'"
(p. 1064, n. 153). We have seen that he

himself grants that what the regime "openly"
pursues are "less exalted
ends."
So understood, the common good requires less in the way of effort and talent
and is more "indirection."
accordingly easily coaxed through On the basis of
Rahe's own analysis, then, one cannot
"openly"
help but wonder why what America
pursues what rales and is honored
by everyone in the daylight
should not be taken as the core of its identity. Rahe rightly cites and emulates
Augustine and Mill on just this point. We recall his quotation from Augustine,
people,'"
for whom "'a is a "'multitudinous assemblage . . . united by concord

regarding loved things held in
common.'"
Mill locates political identity in that

"'something which is
settled,'"
is "'not to be
question'"
which called into and

loyalty'"
which inspires "'the feeling of allegiance, or (pp. 2, 22). But re
"question"
course only to those principles whose sovereignty is beyond for
us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness leaves us still in search of the
purpose"
"higher Rahe purports to find in Americanism. We have yet to dis

cover an authoritative, public basis on which to identify America with ends any
higher than comfortable self-preservation and means any nobler than calculat
ing reason.
Perhaps we err to expect more. John Adams seems to have foreseen little
more. Rahe quotes a long passage in which Adams argues that the ancients
thought the laws an insufficient check on the people until they
were habituated, by education and discipline, to regard the great duties of life, and
to consider a reverence of themselves and the esteem of their fellow-citizens, as the
principal source of their enjoyment. In small communities . . this might be
plausible; but the education of a great nation can never accomplish so great an end.
(P. 543)
security"
Instead of an education in public virtue, argues Adams, the "only lies

interest."
in opposing power "to power, and interest to Rahe astutely places this
Adams'
quotation at the very beginning of book 3. What light does description
ground"
cast on the nature of the "middle allowed the national legislators? And
"political"
to what extent is their activity in the classical sense? We have seen
that Aristotle's mixed regime likewise relies to some extent on the manipulation
of interest and passion in order to enhance the rule of rational deliberation.

Separation of powers appears to seek the same end, but with this important
"deliberate"
difference: the separation of powers provides freedom to
only
about governmental ends already lowered by natural-rights doctrine as embed
ded formally in the Constitution. Thus, on the one hand, Rahe is correct that
architecture"
the United States rejects a dependence on "political alone to
achieve its national ends. Some reliance on political logos is expected and
nurtured. But, on the other hand, this is logos restricted to securing life, lib
erty, and the pursuit of happiness. As such, it is not full deliberation in Aris
"lawmaking."
totle's sense; rather, it is The latter lacks the latitude of
discretion that distinguishes the former. The reduction of deliberation to law
making follows logically from the reduction of ancient to modem political pur
poses. Its ends thus condensed, the national regime can rely more confidently
"indirection."
on It can leave matters of moral paideia as well as higher educa
tion to states, families, and churches.
Rahe is right to contest the notion that separation of powers is concerned

280 Interpretation
merely with maintaining liberty against government encroachment. The consti
tutional scheme aims at more than negative liberty; it aims at something that
appears comparable to classical virtue and prudence in that it strives to glean
from its people and their representatives the competence and character requisite
to achieving its lower goals. To the extent that it recognizes that even modem
liberty requires a measure of public and private virtue, it can be said to reach
closest to antiquity. On these terms, the pivotal distinction between republics
ancient and modem parallels that between a catechism and a machine, respec
tively. The Americans agree with the early modems in lowering the ends of
political life. But they deny that even these lowered ends can be achieved in
machinelike fashion.
But does this prove Rahe's thesis that the United States, while first and
foremost modem and liberal, is also a "deliberately contrived mixed regime"?

"wisdom" "virtue"
Are the and called for and praised in, for example, Federal
ist 57, anything more than enlightened self-interest or common-sense sobriety,
"ancient,"
rather than anything uniquely much less Aristotelian, in character?
As we have seen and will explore further, Rahe finds in multiplicity, federal
ism, separation of powers, and the like the means by which the Framers resur
rected "within a carefully defined and limited sphere, the autonomy of moral
reason"
and political (p. 602). Yet if he correctly assays the degree to which
the Framers followed Locke's view that the only valid moral principles are
" "
'that
together'
those are absolutely necessary to hold Society and follow the

"'rules
convenience,'"
of to what extent is American "moral and political rea-
son[ing]" "autonomous"
as as Rahe claims? (pp. 292-93, 315-34).
The road down which this question takes us is illuminated by our reflecting
on the dynamics of "political
architecture."
We have seen that modem
thought's relative decapitation of political

activity mandates reliance on institu
tions. Man understood as a passion-driven calculator is more adminis
easily
tered to and satisfied by a machine-like government. Although they largely
agree with Hobbes's human nature, the Founders do not take Hobbes to
view of
his radically depoliticized conclusion. Such "inconsistency" is salutary,

by Ar
istotle's lights, because he would find Hobbes's view of human nature and
politics incomplete in its refusal to take
seriously man's desire to live a morally
serious life. For Aristotle, Hobbes's self-proclaimed, political sci
"realistic"
ence in divorcing itself from man's and the city's natural need to know and
in the highest would
participate be, in the final count, unrealistic.
Framers'
However salutary the departure from Hobbes may be, if the Con
"stealthily"
stitution frees up logos and encourages men to deliberate about
concerns that transcend mere advantage, it does little formally to inform its
citizens what those higher concerns are. Perhaps at the time of the
founding
such information would have been superfluous. The "higher purpose"
to which
Rahe points was supplied
by religion and tradition through the vessel of the
family. But of late, with the devaluing of the vessel and its cargo, the moral
marketplace has opened wide to a hodgepodge of peddlers of the "politics of

meaning."
These observations point back to the question that opened this essay. Our
formal constitutional principles do not answer satisfactorily the question "What
American?"
does it mean to be an in terms other than those of calculating
reason life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For this reason, all other
attempted answers all that purport to transcend the demands of rationalized
interest are declaimed by one faction or another, at one time or another, as
"un-American."
The new republic opens to all individuals all possibilities, and
its new science promises unlimited progress to where, and for what, only the
emancipated individual can decide. Given the decline in the transpolitical au
thority of religion, tradition, and the family which we must own is in some
measure the result of our classical liberal principles together with the impact
of the critique of bourgeois virtue by German philosophy of both the left and
where"
what"
right, the decisions of "to and "for lead largely today to terror or
ennui. Both states of soul invite, through different doors, the soft, enervating
despotism of which Tocqueville spoke and against which he labored. Needless
to say, both states have their representatives in American culture today.
This is neither to assert nor to imply that the Founders thought their new
ends."
republic free of the need for its citizens to pursue more "exalted Far
from it. They in fact both expected and relied on such other-regarding voca
tions. But the problem confronting anyone who would analyze America em
ploying Aristotelian regime analysis is that our relegation of such pursuits and
of the education in them to states, families, and churches means that what is
highest about the national regime is not, properly speaking, part of that regime.
Stated differently, what is exalted about our regime is somehow beyond the
control, though certainly not beyond the good wishes, of the regime. This be
comes more concrete when we first grant what is obvious the fact that the
American story presents a good number of examples of courage, self-sacrifice,
generosity, and a certain greatness of soul and then inquire into its sources.
The Role of Federalism in Completing the Regime
"indirect"
That the paideia provided by the Constitution encourages its citi
zens to self-restraint, frugality, etc. the bourgeois virtues we have already

seen. But where do citizens find the incentive for courage, self-sacrifice, gener
osity, and the like? To the extent that these are commonly practiced, their
source nearly always and everywhere has been piety and, with it, the family, in
piety is inculcated. But these two sources of our more "exalted
ends"
which
are, as Rahe is well aware, certainly not the central and in fact hardly even an
explicit focus of regulation by the national government (pp. 64 Iff.). Rahe cites
Madison's description of the chief work of the House of Representatives in

282 Interpretation
legislation'
Federalist 56: '"the objects of federal . . . which are of most im

militia.'"
portance ... are "'commerce, taxation, and the
At the same time, Rahe rightly notes that the Constitution explicitly leaves
power"
the regulation of piety and family to the states under their "police ("po
lice"
derives from polis). He entertains no illusions on the question of whether
enlightened self-interest is an ethos sufficient in moral stamina to sustain a
democratic republic (p. 687). Rahe is every bit aware of the possibility that the
way of life sired by modem republicanism may in time come to undermine the
very virtues required for its perpetuation. He finds that a number of New En
gland states at the founding also faced this question and were equally anxious
over its answer. Hence these states sought to support religion. And here the
Anti-Federalists'
demand for the Religion Clause of the First Amendment ap
preventing Congress from interfering with the
states'
pears to aim as much at
regulation of religion as preventing Congress itself from supporting religion in

anything but a nonpreferential manner.
Rahe appears to agree with Tocqueville that religion is America's preemi
institution. From this he concludes, "There was and is

nent social more to the
laws"
American politeia than can be found in the nation's written (p. 764).
Thus the fact that the Constitution leaves "moral police by and large in the
church"
hands of the family and needs to be balanced against the equally rele
vant point that the same Constitution also "conceded to state and local govern
ments, and to the schools which these set up, considerable leeway in giving
support"
them (p. 778). To this informal, extraconstitutional, yet regime-com
pleting, spiritual-moral consensus Rahe argues we must return. For no people

crisis"
can sustain itself during "a great merely on the basis of the ethos of
"'comfortable
self-preservation.'"
This is due to the fact that, despite modern

efforts,"
ity's "best man remains what classical political philosophy thought

deliberations"
him to be "a political animal whose public resist explanation
through a simple hedonist reductionism because they manifest in the final count
the natural need to live a morally serious life (p. 772).

Because control over a good deal of what transforms a multitude into a
people was left in the hands of the thirteen states, America's civic paideia was
completed through the combination of the powers and

duties of the national and
state and local governments, that is, federalism. Rahe asks that we reexamine
and revivify the sphere of political
activity that formerly lay open at the local
level.
There is much to recommend his recommendation. He finds support for his
project in Jefferson and Tocqueville; both saw in local participation a combina
tion of classroom and coliseum in which
everyday citizens might sharpen their
ruling skills and hence better understand and defend their interests against the
subdued and subduing despotism of paternal government. Indeed, this may well
"indirect"
be as important to our civic education as commerce, and
multiplicity,
separation of powers. Here Tocqueville underscores the importance of what he
habits"
calls the "mental of the citizens. Against the open, popular power of
phihsophe ideology, Tocqueville finds in local participation an oblique method
habits,"
for introducing into liberal democratic culture the "mental if not the
science,"
content, of his "new political which looks to provide the prudent

habits"
flexibility wanting in Locke's project. Proper "mental promise to illu

minate the content by which to guide the citizens themselves in their efforts to
democracy.15
maintain liberal Local participation requires and develops the citi
zens'
ability to reason inductively, thus undermining the "generalizing tenden

cies"
or doctrinairism of the age. So understood, participation opposes the

power of philosophe-'mspired intellectuals through increasing the power of
opinion generated at the bottom common opinion modified by the knowledge
the everyday citizen gains from his tasks at self-government. I find here in
habits"
Tocqueville Aristotle's spirit at the least. "Mental appear in one sense
to be the modem republican parallel of Aristotle's hexis the "settled disposi

tion"
whose proper orientation toward the passions is virtue (Nicomachean

Ethics 1105bl9-1106al3).
Rahe, following Tocqueville, is not calling for populism or direct democ
racy, for, like Tocqueville, he values the latitude for deliberation made possible
by representation. Rather, popular participation is salutary when circumscribed
citizens'
to objects within the experience. Enlightenment requires more than a
collective consciousness raised to awareness of the general ideas constituting

rights doctrine. It requires also the education that comes from governing, mean
ing, for us, an education in limits. If the popular dissemination of the doctrine
of the Rights of Man teaches radically new possibilities for radically free indi
viduals, local participation teaches the limits to which rights doctrine can be
implemented, thus combating the utopianism of phihsophe thought and, with
citizens'
it, the tendency of rights doctrine to secure the acquiescence in pacific
serfdom.
Jefferson worried that, with the loss of local participation, citizens would
likewise lose the means and motives to defend against federal encroachment.
selfishness"
Such "enlightened and vigilant was, for Jefferson, demotic virtue,

and this must be bome in mind when attempting to come to grips with what
"classical"
some read to be the character of his view that a measure of public
and private virtue is required to maintain republicanism (pp. 726-29). Rahe

argues cogently that Jefferson's anxiety over corruption and embrace of virtue
owe "far more to Machiavelli's subordination of virtii to individual security and
Jefferson's
well-being"
than to the ancient understanding. conception of popu
lar virtue does not include self-sacrifice for the community. Rather, he and
Madison, like their Federalist adversaries, "sought to forge from self-interest a

for"
substitute the other-regarding virtues that the ancients deemed essential to
republicanism (pp. 742-43).

For Jefferson, some degree of political activity is necessary to maintain pri
vate liberty. Public life is neither noble nor coextensive with human perfection
284 Interpretation
and happiness. Rather, private vices yield public benefits whose regulation on
the local level is an activity that arms the wit and steels the soul against seduc
tion by centralized government. Precisely because it is as selfishly grounded as
any of the private vices, political activity in Jefferson's sense promises to edu
cate citizens through an appeal to their natural desire to identify with and hence
to seek to protect the powers and perquisites enjoyed by state and local govern
ments under the original federal scheme. Men love most, and hence are most
jealous of, their own things. We recall that Aristotle identifies thumos as "the
love."
power by which we Local participation succeeds in fortifying liberty
to the extent that the citizen finds in the love of his
community the thu
own
motic puissance by which to raise his head from possessive individualism

jealousy,"
and, through "political maintain the vigilance crucial to modem

republicanism.
In sum, local participation is both possible and substantial because each
community provides the smallness, homogeneity, and closedness ("community

standards") required if individual citizens are to come at least in some measure
to identify the public interest with their own. The local community alone ap
proximates the intimacy requisite to the political catechism of the ancient polis.
For these reasons, Tocqueville finds federalism enhances and protects the two
senses of liberty (political and civil) that he finds at work in liberal democracy.
Local self-government (political liberty), though too easily a source of danger

to security in private enjoyments (civil liberty), also serves the latter by guard
ing against a despotic accumulation of powers in the central government.
Against this defense of local participation stands the rationale behind "incor
poration"
the procedure by which certain requirements of the Bill of Rights

have been applied to the states. According to this rationale, the threat to civil
liberty posed by states, communities, and sundry private, voluntary associa
tions outweighs the benefits of the education in political liberty that participa
tion at these levels provides. Rahe rightly laments incorporation's virtual
emasculation of the regime-fortifying capacities formerly granted the states un

der the police power. As he states it, "the federal courts have transformed the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights into an instrument subversive of the private
institutions that provide the modest, moral paideia needed to sustain our re
gime"
(p. 780). How did this occur?
While a good deal of our movement toward centralized government can be

traced to the demands of an ever more sophisticated modem
economy as well
as advances in communications technology, no less responsible for the blows

federalism
"rights."
stmck at over the last six decades has been the explosion of
With the Fourteenth Amendment serving (contrary to the intent of its framers)
Rights'
as the constitutional conduit by which the bulk of the Bill of restrictions
(along with a growing number of pseudo-rights) has trickled seriatim to the

states, uniformity necessarily has emerged where federalism-created diversity
previously prevailed.
The Fourteenth Amendment owes its being to the Civil War. The war, in
turn, would not have been fought were it not for slavery. Now, those familiar
with the theory of justice presented in the Declaration are hard pressed to deny
the persuasiveness of Lincoln's case that slavery is inimical to the Declaration's
core principles. This even some Southerners granted, at least at the time of the
Constitutional Convention and the unhappy, nearly fatal, compromise on slav
ery that it produced. But if it is clear that the South could claim little support
for its peculiar institution in a proper reading of the Declaration, it is less clear
that it failed to find succor there for its asserted right of secession. This is
shown most powerfully by Rahe's argument that the author of the Declaration,
had he been alive in 1860, may well have defended the South's right to se
cede and this with the full, painful awareness of the inhumanity of the institu
tion secession sought to save. Why?
The Hamilton-Jefferson Debate as Regime Paradigm
Jefferson's defense was animated by a view of republican liberty in which
we have seen Rahe finds merit and to which he bids us now return. Our age
stands in critical need of relearning the indispensability of demotic "watchful
ness" "jealousy"
and distrust of the federal government, and this Jeffersonian
both feeds
states'
on and fosters the rights argument. Without a power base

apart from and largely independent of the national government, popular "dis
trust"
of centralized authority lacks the means to resist encroachments. It also

lacks the palpable perquisites by which attachment to and hence defense of
local government might make a convincing case before the bar of self-interest.
Thus, while he judges Jefferson's critique of Marshall's Marbury opinion an
"overreact[ion] Rahe takes quite seriously Jefferson's general caveat concern

'despotism' 'oligarchy.'"
ing "judicial and For while Rahe agrees with Ham

ilton that America "a species of compromise between Hobbesian monarchy
democracy" monarchical
and classical was at its founding "insufficiently it

"opposite"
today faces the danger (p. 781).

Quite so; at the same time, and as Rahe is well aware, it was not the na
tional government but the states that were responsible for the single most op
pressive institution in our history. And it was not the national government but
the postbellum states that continued to some extent to deny to the freed slaves
the rights to which they were by both nature and political convention entitled.
As the sally in the law schools goes, "You can't have federalism so long as
old
Mississippi."
you have The rights to which the Declaration tells us all men
everywhere are entitled cannot vary in magnitude and, a fortiori, cannot exist
or not exist depending on one's location in relation to the conventional
boundaries that we call states. In short, our commitment tofederalism fell to

our commitment to justice. The turning of the Bill of Rights against the
286 Interpretation
states against the very entities whose most ardent defenders were largely re
sponsible for the addition of a Bill of Rights was publicly justified by the
refusal to secure fully the rights of the descendants of

states'
southern slaves.
The repudiation of federalism is due first and foremost to this fact. Allegiance
to smallness faded and, with it, the place of federalism in our constitutional
system, because smallness came to be viewed as more, not less, dangerous to

individual liberty than was the large, extended republic. Because for us liberty
is less the exercise of the virtues of the citizen and more the protection of the
enjoyments of the householder, largeness not smallness centralized govern
ment not federalism becomes the sine qua non of the best regime.
states'
Rahe grants that Jefferson's strident defense of agriculture and rights

in
statesmanship."
was ultimately an "almost grotesque error While his defense

was far from synonymous with the South 's later case for slavery, Jefferson's
apparent position provided intellectual and moral legitimacy to slavery's sup
porters.16
In the course of detailing the unwitting role played by Jefferson and

Madison in support of the southern cause, Rahe raises implicitly the question
whether the institution of Hamilton's reforms at the time he presented his Re
port on the Subject of Manufactures might not have made it possible for the
country to resolve the slavery dispute without recourse to the bloodiest war in
its history. Hamilton's program to strengthen the national economy would have
had the effect of assimilating states more to each other while diversifying the
elements within states, and hence may have undermined the passion with which
the South identified itself with slavery. Had Jefferson's and Madison's efforts
against Hamilton, commerce, and the growth of the national government not
been so short sighted and intemperate, and had the homogenizing and pacifying
because commercializing effects of Hamilton's economic reforms been able to
take hold south of the Mason-Dixon line, perhaps the slavery problem could
have been resolved in the same, remarkable manner at which Tocqueville mar
velled on reviewing our change of government from the old Articles to the new
blood."17
Constitution "without its costing humanity a single tear or drop of
We shall never know whatearly implementation of Hamilton's program

the
would have effected. We do know that there was to be no irenic solution to the
slavery issue, and this failure is at once the most tragic and the most illuminat
ing event in American history. We also know that Lincoln as president "imple
much"
mented a program of political and economic reform that owed to

Hamilton (p. 779). The man who proclaimed "all honor to
Jefferson"
resur
rected many of the economic and political reforms of Jefferson's greatest oppo
nent and denied through conquest the right of Jefferson's Virginia to secede.18
With Lincoln, through no fault of his own, came war, and with
war, as Mad
ison predicted, came an inevitable growth in the size and power of the central
government (p. 723). But the real
and illegitimate inflation of federal
power came not from Lincoln and the Civil War Amendments but from the
subsequent misinterpretation of those
amendments, especially the Fourteenth,
in the twentieth century, which has produced the incursions on family and
church against which Rahe today
properly protests.
Here, then, lies a paradox. For those who consider the swelling of national
power to be in some measure disastrous, the defense of federalism by which
this growth was at least forestalled appears salutary. Yet that defense Rahe
shows was animated first and foremost by the passionate attachment to slavery
and, later, to racial segregation. In the defense of injustice we find a level of

spiritedness and, with it, martial force sufficient to block the bloating of central
government for some time here. The South, whose putative allegiance to feder
alism, it should be noted, was equally a game of on-again, off-again opportun
ism, nonetheless seems to have been more committed to maintaining its
mastery than the citizenry as a whole has since been committed to
over slaves
maintaining its freedom against an enslaving central government. The exagger
ated indeed, the depraved pride of the slave master and his moral heirs
seems to have been the engine driving and maintaining the independence of
state and local government. Lost with the vices of mastery and overweening
pride was also a way of life sufficiently attractive to render the local citizenry
"jealous'*
amply of federal expansion.

At the same time, we have seen that the primary antagonism to federalism
emanates ostensibly in the name of the project to institute uniform justice
across the nation in light of the perceived dictates of the Constitution. Now,
men may be faulted for their particular notion of justice, but that they should
take their view of the just so seriously that they long for it to rale the world at
the least to rule all of their own country is not only understandable because
natural, but also good in this sense: the lack of such commitment nearly always
derives not from an enlightened appreciation for the flexibility required of pru
dence but from an indifference to the gods of other peoples bom of a like
indifference to the principled foundations of one's own way of life. Universal
tolerance and, with it, peace is a dividend most likely to be received from the
universal conviction that no principle of justice is worth fighting and dying for.
In this light, the centripetal pressure on American politics is hardly to be
wondered at. And this pressure is all the more likely and legitimate given the
fact that the Founders established (as Madison in Federalist 39) "in
remarks
strictness neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of

both."
That fellow NATO members would repulse suggestions from one an
other concerning their respective domestic policies is understandable and
proper. That Mississippi can rightly claim to merit similar autonomy against the
moral demands of her northern neighbors is another matter.

"detachment"
Yet such seems to be precisely what an effective federal ar
rangement requires. Federalism looks to institutionalize the conviction that the
liberties we share as members of one nation depend somehow on our separate
and simultaneous identities as members of the various states and local commu
nities. The maintenance of the brand of federalism on which the Federalists and
288 Interpretation
Anti-Federalists reached their compromise at the founding requires our firm,

principled embrace of principled flexibility. Montesquieu insisted on this in the
Hume
face of and as a remedy for the doctrinairism that he and saw lying
dormant in modem natural-rights teaching. Looking to the liberty of all, we
need somewhat to look away from the practices of each. At the very least, this
means allowing local communities discretion on the widest possible range of
issues and responsibilities (states were already at the founding too large for the
intimacy required of civic paideia). Barring violations of the Constitution,

communities must be allowed the latitude to err at times in their policies and
practices. But, as Tocqueville sees, such forbearance is anathema to phihsophe
"disgust"
rationalism, which views with the halting half-steps and "numerous

blunders"
concomitant with local self-government.19
No less can be said of the

the bulk of this century's educated elites to the
states'
response by conduct on
the issues of segregation and apportionment. Thus it is less than remarkable
that the desire to make justice uniform came to tramp the view that the mainte
nance of liberty as well as justice requires a like maintenance of the identities
and powers of the state and local governments.
Moreover, it may be that a part of our nature would rather be compelled to

be just than be free to do injustice. We want more than self-preservation, lati
tude, and idiosyncratic contentment. We want, most of all, to discover and
participate in a way of life whose goodness has such luster that it finally out
weighs all other considerations, including that of life itself. While such longing
may lie dormant and undisclosed in the souls of most men most of the time, it
is in fact implicit in what Rahe's ancient Greeks found to be the trait by which
man is distinguished from the beasts the natural need to discern and commu
nicate what is advantageous, just, and good. Thus, while one may view the
downfall of local participation as proof of Acton's maxim, it may be no less an
indication of man's longing for justice.
From these reflections issues perhaps a more precise portrait of the distance
between American and classical republicanism. First, while the ancient Greeks
also practiced federalism, theirs was of a substantively different sort. We have
seen that their end in remaining small was to retain the conditions necessary to
moral paideia. Politics is for the sake of character, and character formation
requires smallness; hence any politeia worthy of the name must remain small.
But Jefferson's defense of the rights of states and the goodness of partitioning
"wards" "virtue"
the states into looks to inculcate a demotic of a sort markedly
different from that sought by classical defenders of smallness (p. 719). As we
have seen, the local political participation encouraged
by federalism does not
constitute man's completion but is a means to transpolitical ends whose good
ness is illuminated fully by the cold light of
calculating reason. On this basis, I
must conclude that our peculiar mix of national and federal principles is finally
a marriage of Locke and Montesquieu rather than Rahe's fusion of Hobbes and
ancient republicanism. Of course, Locke is in key respects a Hobbesian, but the
view that Montesquieu is in any important way a classical republican Rahe

roundly refutes. Accordingly, while Rahe has convinced this writer of the
"mixed"
character of the American polity, we appear to be finally not an amal
gam of ancients and modems but rather a mix of the competing modem
"architecture" "watchfulness"
schools versus demotic whose contours Rahe
so masterfully illustrates.
AMERICAN POLITICS, TRAGEDY, AND MYTH
My earlier critique of the deliberative limitations of Rahe's constitutional

middle ground appears to find implicit support in one of his chief concerns, if
not his chief concern, over America's present and future. He blames "judicial
encroachment"
in large Congress
controversy"
part on a eager to "sidestep (p.

781). The very validity of his accusation produces melancholy the following
reflection. If the Constitution opens a middle ground for legislators to employ
their logos to deliberate about the just and good, this very group seizes nearly
every opportunity to flee that ground. Why?

Disputes that are deeply political, those which move directly to the heart of
our principles, also most antagonize a good number of a legislator's constitu
ents. Hence the initial happiness with which some politicians met the Dred
Scott mling. They, the people's representatives, were emancipated from the
duty of making the painful decision over slavery, the burden having been
passed to the unelected, life-tenured, putatively unpolitical federal judiciary.
Hence also the hand wringing and waffling by politicians on both sides of the
abortion question in the wake of the profederalism Webster decision. The over
whelming majority of legislators operates on the basis of the "electoral impera

tive,"
which mandates that they avoid principled conflict whenever possible.

"wrested"
The judiciary has hardly from the legislature; it has largely
power
questions"
been handed jurisdiction over previously labelled "political on a sil
ver platter and with Congress's blessings.
In the face of this ignoble abdication by their elected representatives, how

have their constituents responded? By reelecting them regularly. The average
legislator is returned to Washington term after term in part because his constitu
ents deem him successful at plucking from the national treasury their fair share
bumper-
wants"
of the public plunder. "Avoid politics; satisfy material is the

sticker rendering of the program articulated by the founders of modem political
philosophy. Might one conclude that this credo describes no less the modus
operandi of our national representatives? Perhaps little more is to be expected
in the new republic, given its acute sensitivity to the fact that a "zeal for differ
just, has
opinions"
ent concerning the advantageous, and good rendered men
"much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their
(Federalist 10).
good"
common
290 *
Interpretation
At the same time, and against these depoliticizing dynamics, we have

weighed the effects of the retention by the states of the police power. A good
"politics"
deal of American in Rahe's precise sense takes or took place not at
the national but at the state and local levels. Given the extent of the previous
these smaller, subordinate entities in regulating and thus deliber

role played by
ating about religion, art, science, family matters, and the like, incorporation, as
currently construed, reveals itself to be a further means of depoliticization.

Incorporation's removal from communities of the powers requisite to transform
a multitude into effectively dislodges the last source of anything re

a people
sembling a viable, because intimate, civic paideia. In this sense, incorporation

pushes us further toward the modem end of the continuum between ancients
and modems on which Rahe places us, and this is a substantial part of what he
means when he warns that today we have moved too much in the direction of
recognizes that the Court- and

monarchy"
"Hobbesian (p. 781). But while Rahe

bureaucracy-enforced depoliticization of the citizenry is due first and foremost
to the self-depoliticization of our national legislators, he seems less disposed to
highlight the basis in our fundamental principles for Congress's self-imposed
exile from the middle ground.
The drive toward more centralized government and, with it, the diminution
of the demotic virtues fostered by local participation, has been effected in pur
suit of quintessentially modem ends, namely, the extension of the utmost pri
"privatization"
vacy and security to the individual and hence the of previously

public or quasi-public concerns, e.g., religion and morals. This we have seen
was ordained with a view to insulating citizens from government's any gov
ernment's regulation of those activities judged to fall under the category of

freedoms."
"preferred In this century, liberty, so understood, has come to
trump economy as the principled engine driving centralization. If Rahe rightly

remarks the applicability today of Jefferson's concern over judicial "despo
tism," courts'
and if the overreaching both feeds on and fosters the demise of
local participation, then liberty understood as enjoyment of private pursuits
entails a tyrannic logic no less than liberty understood in the classical sense as
sharing in social power. While Montesquieu powerfully that "virtue it

argues
limits,"
self has need of the lesson of the American experience rejoins that
liberty modemly understood is no less needy. Single-minded fealty to either

project appears a precondition of despotism. In the American proj
case of the
ect, incorporation has so tipped us in the modem, depoliticized direction that

we can be said to have undergone a change of regime in this century. Thus
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, while sadly mistaken about the
Founders'
deepest moral intentions, spoke more truth than he knew when he
declared, "While the Union survived the Civil War, the Constitution did not. In
its place arose a new, more
promising basis for justice and equality, the Four
teenth Amendment. . .
Marshall's remark returns us to the theme of with it, raises the

slavery and,
question whether the American story is finally a tragedy. One must concede
Framers'
that the effort toform a more perfect union through the adoption of
the Constitution left them no alternative but to allow slavery to continue for the
foreseeable future. But this appeal to necessity, while valid, cannot simply
erase the moral ugliness of the circumstances necessitating the compromise.
Moreover, the disease with which the nation was afflicted as an embryo has in
a number of ways metastasized over our more than two hundred years as a
nation. Granted, we removed the growth through the bloodiest war in our his
tory. But in the century thereafter we continued to flout in practice what we
espoused in principle. Finally, the evil became so unbearable that to rid our
selves of it we acquiesced in the growth of the federal leviathan in whose
bureaucratic belly our participation-dependent virtues are now in danger of suf
focating. Had we not inherited slavery prior to the founding, and had so much
of our subsequent history not been the product, direct and indirect, of the insti
tution, one cannot but wonder whether this would not have dampened the angry
spirit of uniformity and, with it, the cause of centralized government.
As it happened, the massive project publicly defended as necessary to elimi
nate slavery and, later, official segregation brought us face to face with the
other hom of our national dilemma. While the fall of the peculiar institution
brought down with it the depraved pride for which the southern aristocracy was
notorious, such high self-regard and spiritedness were not limited to upper-class
plantation owners. Everyday southern citizens, according to Burke, "'were by

freedom'
far the most proud and jealous of their "; for political liberty, precisely
because it was not shared by all in the South, was taken by all as a sign of
distinction, something to be esteemed, something of which to be jealous, some
thing worth fighting and dying for (pp. 549-50). Clearly, the repugnant foun
dation of this pride also spawned a culture stunning for its moral and economic
sluggishness, not to mention outright decadence. Nevertheless, our justified

revulsion at chattel slavery cannot justify our blinking at the melancholy fact
that, in its peculiar institution, the South more than any region at any time in
our history found the pride and spiritedness by which to practice that "jeal
Jefferson thought
ousy"
of national power that so crucial to the maintenance of
republican liberty. But must melancholy be our last reaction to the American
story?
Never has there been a founding less dependent on myth and more open to
the influence of unassisted reason than America's. For this very reason, our
inability to recover from our hereditary may well drag down with it
affliction
modem philosophy's best practical defense before the bar of politics. If Amer
ica is finally to rectify the consequences of slavery and, therewith, rescue its
fate from the pronouncement of tragedy, the road by which it will do so lies in
discovering a new source of pride and robust independence, one free of the
depravity that must accompany mastery. The proper object of the culture's
derision should not be the conventional slave but, rather, natural slavishness
292 Interpretation
the state of soul in which freedom appears good only for the material advan
tages it brings, rather than for the intellectual and moral development it allows.21
The noninstramental stance toward freedom, which Tocqueville recognizes as
characteristic of aristocratic societies, clearly runs in tension with the passion
for equality that both moves modem democracy and invites centralizing gov
ernment. Precisely for this reason pride and its concomitant thumos are salutary
freedom"
for us. In brief, for America to experience a "new birth of today, we
must discover or recover the noble the splendor of justice, the good as lov
able in itself. Only to the extent that a people freely chooses the noble can it
world,"
hope plausibly to proclaim, to a "candid the nobility of its choice of

freedom (see Nicomachean Ethics 1115M8-23; Politics 1281a2-8). In order
for us to identify and esteem Jefferson's natural aristoi, we must be taught, and
taught to revere, the beautiful and just possibilities that inhere in man's posses
sion of a public nature.
Yet, if the above accurately describes one road to an American renaissance,

the dilemma immediately arises concerning the utility of making a public case
for the public utility of a nonutilitarian morality. Better perhaps would be some
tale in which the steadfast conviction of the independent dignity of political life
is advertised not as a foreign import but as the rediscovery of a truth that
informs the construction of our most sacred documents. Demonstrating the su
periority on several levels of the latter approach will stand as one of the
many lasting contributions of Republics Ancient and Modern.

Past attempts to find classical elements in America's principles have met
"myth-making,"
with derision from some. Such say the critics, comes too late
in a regime founded on enlightenment principles. It would be less than surpris
ing were Rahe's claim to find antique components in America greeted likewise
in certain quarters. At the same time, few, if any, of these critics are likely to
meaning
deny that Americans today are in need of a "politics of be it left or
right, ancient or modem. But to concede this need goes some distance toward
granting what Rahe deems antiquity's distinguishing premise that man's na
ture requires for its completion his employing logos to the end of discerning
and communicating the advantageous, just, and good. Of course, while nearly
citizens'
all of today's competing camps endorse to some extent the endorse
ment of the view of the independent dignity of politics, some in these camps
append the disclaimer that the noninstramental view of politics is finally but a
salutary myth it is more than merely un-American, it is also untrue. Yet this
very qualification compels them to deny that what they praise as salutary about
what they condemn as mythical is itself a myth. So far as this admission ques
tions the optimism that undergirds and justifies the enlightenment project, the
classical view appears rehabilitated.
Accordingly, to the extent that the found
ing principles do not hinder and in fact depend on the public elevation of public
virtue, the antiquing of America may not be the myth that certain of its critics
in the past have supposed. At the very least, our shared concern over the dehu-
manized character of a depoliticized citizenry signals our need to explore with
fresh and sympathetic eyes the philosophy as well as the practice of Greek
antiquity.
CONCLUSION: THE POLITICS OF REPUBLICS ANCIENT AND MODERN
Paul Rahe has written this book, he informs us, in order that we as a people
might pause to ponder seriously what our "first principles are and what they
entail"
(p. 782). He intends his work to serve a restorative function. In our
coming to grips with his analysis of the founding we stand a better chance of
"drift"
halting our tendency toward principled (p. 777). An earlier loss of our
national bearings was faced by Lincoln.

way of concluding, Rahe reflects
By
on the relevance Lincoln's 1838 Lyceum Address holds for America today.
Mindful of the differences between Lincoln's day and ours, Rahe finds none
theless that our day, like Lincoln's, must plead guilty to gross ignorance of our
founding principles. Exacerbating our national amnesia are the psychological
and moral atrophy concomitant with "more than four decades of comparative
peace and prosperity. . . . Our success is, paradoxically, the cause of our
defects"
(p. 776).
"extreme"
These defects render our current predicament as as that con
fronted by Lincoln (p. 777). While "the Founders argued for and sought to
republic,"
institute an enlightened the task of enlightening the citizenry was
failing in Lincoln's day and is no less at risk in our own (p. 778). In his time,
the principles of the Revolution had been largely forgotten in the North and
were brazenly contradicted in the South. In our time, "We spend colossal sums
on education, but it cannot be said that we manage to inculcate a reverence for

understanding"
or even an of our core principles and the Constitution whose

construction they inform (p. 779). In his time, growing popular adherence to
the views of the goodness of slavery and the simple rectitude of popular sov
ereignty threatened to make a sham of the Declaration. In our time, sundry

European philosophic movements "utilitarianism, positivism, idealism, his
existentialism"
toricism, Marxism, pragmatism, and allhighly influential in

our institutions of higher learning, alike trumpet their incompatibility with the
Declaration's self-evident truths.
Worse still, our age's difficulties are exacerbated in a manner that Lincoln's
local" tangible"
were not. Gone with his day is "largely and hence "real and
self-government by which communities were able to "reinforce the family and

police"
church in matters of moral (p. 780). In our day, national unification and
administrative centralization have grown far beyond anything ever envisioned
by Hamilton. Serving as both symptom and cause of these difficulties has been
the steadily growing power of the federal courts. In this light, Rahe rightly
"despotism"
judges Jefferson's fears concerning judicial to ring much truer in

than they did in his (p. 781).
our day
294 Interpretation
If Paul Rahe entertains similar fears, he ends his book on a note of hope
nonetheless. While it remains a question whether we now possess the energy
crisis"
and moral unity to survive the next "great that will inevitably come our
way, Rahe encourages by reminding us that while we may be adrift at present,

we have been so before and regained our bearings (p. 782). But to restore our
ponder"
first principles we must first "seriously their meaning and application.
Republics Ancient and Modern will prove an enduring and indispensable sup
port in the quest for the self-knowledge on which the preservation of our more
perfect union depends.
NOTES
1. See Joseph Cropsey's incisive 1975 essay, "The United States as Regime and the Sources of
Life,"
the American Way of in his Political Philosophy and the Issues of Politics (Chicago: Univer
sity of Chicago Press; Phoenix Edition, 1980), pp. 1-15.
2. See Martin Diamond, The Founding of the Democratic Republic (Itasca, IL: Peacock,
1981), pp. 2-12.
3. All page references in this review are to the hardcover, single volume.
4. Whether the momentous 1994 elections in fact represent a sea change in these practices
must, at this writing, remain an object of speculation.
5. See Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed
Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1987), pp. 25-43.
6. (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1952), pp. 22-37. This and other of Strauss's works have
context"
been charged with ignoring or paying insufficient attention to the "historical of philosophic
thought. Rahe examines exhaustively the context in which the early modems wrote; in so doing, he
comes to concur wholly with Strauss's thesis regarding not only the break between antiquity and
modernity, but also, and more importantly, the self-conscious or horizon-transcending character of
this break.
7. Consider the setting of Plato's Republic as well as the intellectual and moral relation be
"heartland."
tween America's coasts and
8. The deep and pervasive effect technological innovation can exercise over a regime is easily
understood by Americans, for whom the inventions of the cotton gin and the birth control pill have
had profound consequences not only on the laws but, even more importantly, on popular mores.
9. I supply the original Greek with key terms, while following Carnes Lord's translation of the
Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
10. On this subject, see Stephen G. Salkever's "Women, Soldiers, Citizens: Plato and Aristotle
Virility,"
on the Politics of in Essays on the Foundations of Aristotelian Political Science, edited by
Carnes Lord and David K. O'Connor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
11. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p.
251.
Federalist,"
12. See Martin Diamond, "Thein American Political Thought, edited by Morton
J. Frisch Richard Stevens (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971).
and
13. Democracy in America, translated by George Lawrence, edited

by J. P. Mayer (Garden
City: Anchor Books), pp. 454-68.
14. Democracy in America, pp. 465, 462. Cf. Aristotle's for
megalopsuchos, whose concern
"independence"
his or
"self-sufficiency"
accounts for his preference for "beautiful and unprofita
ble"
'useful"
over
merely things (Nicomachean Ethics 1 125al 1 13).
15. I indebted to James W. Ceaser's analysis of Tocqueville in Liberal
am
Democracy and
Political Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1990), pp. 143-76.
16. On this subject Rahe acknowledges his debt to Harry V. Jaffa's "Agrarian Virtue and
Perspective,"
Republican Freedom: An Historical in Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in
American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 42-66. On Lincoln's relation to
Jefferson and the Declaration, see Jaffa's seminal Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of
the Issues in the
Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 308-99.
17. Democracy in America, p. 113.

18. Letter to H. L. Pierce (1859), in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy
P. Basleret al., 9 vols. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953-55): vol. 3, p. 376.
19. Democracy in America, p. 62.

20. Remarks at the annual seminar of the San Francisco Patent and Trademark Law Associa
tion, Maui, Hawaii, May 6, 1977, p. 7.
21. On the enduring perspicacity of Aristotle's teaching on natural slavery, see Darrell D.
Slavery,"
Dobbs's "Natural Right and the Problem of Aristotle's Defense of Journal of Politics
56(1994): 67-94.
Book Reviews
Ni Socrate, ni Jesus
Mark Lilla
University-
New York
Alain Renaud and Luc Ferry, editors, Pourquoi nous ne sommes pas
nietzscheens (Paris: Grasset, 1991).
Nietzschean."
"Every philosopher is first a Twenty-five years ago such a
proclamation would have been greeted with nearly universal acclaim by French
intellectuals, even though most found themselves on the left. Up until that
time, Nietzsche had been considered strictly and more

accurately as a philoso
pher of the right, and had no general influence in France outside of small avant-
garde and surrealist circles. But Nietzsche's status, like Heidegger's, changed
dramatically in the mid-1960s when his ideas were grafted to those of Marx and
Freud, producing that curious hybrid which Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut mem
68."1
orably called "la pensee Despite its intellectual confusion, this mix
proved enormously attractive, and for reasons Ferry and Renaut were first to
explain. Marx, Freud, and Heidegger are theoretically incompatible because
they are, above all else, systematic thinkers. But Nietzsche's writing is un
"dancing"
systematic, and his aphorisms can be employed to many purposes. In

the French thought of the sixties they were used to efface the evident differ
ences between Marxian materialism, Freudian psychology, and Heideggerian
existentialism, making it seem that these thinkers were engaged in a common
campaign to liberate us from Western humanism. The result was syncretism of
the sort Victor Cousin used to practice, hardly a serious confrontation with any
of these German philosophers.
La pensee 68 was an influential book in France, and contributed enormously

to the recent change in intellectual atmosphere there. Kant and Tocqueville are
objects of reflection and veneration in Paris today, not the master-thinkers of
68, and the neohumanists around Ferry and Renaut can take some credit for
Still, La pensee 68 was a work of cultural
bringing that change about. mainly
criticism, and did not itself offer the necessary encounter with Marx,
Nietzsche, Freud, or Heidegger. Instead, it tried to show(less successfully, in
doctrine of that period bore some direct relation to
my view) that the syncretic
the events of May 1968, both heralding a new form of modem individualism.

298 Interpretation
But in subsequent writings Ferry and Renaut have begun to consider these
German thinkers directly, and especially their place within the history of mod
em thought about the subject and the individual. This exercise began in their
joint contribution to the Heidegger affair, and in books they have now
separate
Nietzsche.2
turned their attention to Renaut's L'ere de I'individu portrays
Nietzsche as the culmination of the modem philosophical individualism that
first emerged in Leibniz's Monadohgie, while Ferry's Homo aestheticus pre
sents Nietzsche as father of both avant-garde art and its right-wing "hyper-
Ferry and Renaut reject this individualism on both philo
classicizing"
critics.3
sophical and moral grounds, and in each of their recent works have defended
a modified return to Kant's critical project and the universalizing subject it
presupposes.4
It comes as some surprise, then, to discover the sentence, "tout phihsophe

Derrida Deleuze, but in
nietzscheen,"
est d'abord not in the latest work of or a
collection edited by Ferry and Renaut themselves, and entitled Pourquoi nous
ne sommes pas nietzscheens . The title is meant to mislead, and it succeeds. It

suggests a manifesto, or at least a series of autobiographical confessions re
hammer"
counting conversions from Nietzsche's

"philosophy of the to Kantian
humanism. But it is nothing of the sort. The editors explicitly warn the reader
in their preface that "the scales have fallen from our eyes: no one today be
lieves any longer in Absolute Knowledge, in a meaning of history, or in the
'think'
transparency of the subject. That is precisely why it is necessary to

Nietzsche."
Nietzsche against
The rhetorical strategy is a clever one, especially in France, where the fear
of appearing naive seems to dominate all other fears. The campaign of hostile
and thoughtless reviews waged against this book only confirms the prudence of
taking precautions, even today. But an attentive reader of Ferry and Renaut will
not dismiss this bow to Nietzsche merely rhetorical, or opportunistic. He

as
will have noted the repeated assertions in all their books that a return to Kant
and Fichte can only succeed yes, only if it passes through Nietzsche and
Freud. In the first volume of his Philosophie politique, Ferry presented the task
of philosophy today the need to respond to the "How to
as
following question:
conceive a modem humanism that would be neither naively metaphysical nor
simply historicist, and which, as such, could undergird a modern political phi
losophy?"
Nietzsche's refutation of classical metaphysics and modem histori
cism must be taken as given, historically, but his political conclusions are
repellent. Our task is to develop a modem Kantian humanism that can exist
within the bounds of the post-Nietzschean age, that is, without challenging the
fundamental presuppositions of that age. This is how we
"think"
Nietzsche
against Nietzsche.
Such an exercise penser Nietzsche contre Nietzsche could be defended
on any of several grounds. If we accept Nietzsche's claim to have closed an
epoch of philosophy, then any attempt to assess modem
philosophy must nee-
Book Reviews 299
essarily confront Nietzsche's rejection of it. But in so doing we must beware

the temptation to present Nietzsche as
simply antimodem, and the alternative
we face, politically and morally, as one between Nietzsche and modernity en
bloc. Nietzsche's own view was that modernity is only the inevitable outgrowth
of mistaken premodern developments, in particular of classical

philosophy and
Christian morality. Nietzsche is not at all like those reactionaries whose con
tempt for the modem democratic "herd

animal"
leads them to a thoughtless

idealization of the premodern. He harnessed his contempt in order to trace the
genealogy of that creature back to its moral sources. He finds two: Socrates and
Jesus. Penser Nietzsche therefore necessarily entails penser Socrate et Jesus.
This Ferry and Renaut steadfastly refuse to do. And, once again, they have
their reasons. They are alert to the destructive role which nostalgia whether
for an imaginary Athens, Sparta, Rome, or Catholic Middle Ages has played
in European reactionary thought since the French Revolution. They are even
alert to the revival of this nostalgia on the left today, in the name of postmoder
nism. But as with many defenders of liberal humanism in France and the
United States today, this worthy vigilance against subjugation to the past can
also breed an intellectual narrowness in thinking about it. Willingness to live
with the modem political present then transforms itself into an incapacity to
judge it according to any other standard. This, it seems to me, has been the
unintended philosophical consequence of Benjamin Constant's political writ
ings in France recently.
The matter might be posed as a question: does the acceptance of modem
politics as fait accompli also demand an acceptance of modem political philoso
phy on the same grounds? Ferry and Renaut simply assume it does. They as
sume that, just as history closes off certain political possibilities, so it removes
certain philosophical possibilities from us.5
But the case could be made and
indeed has been made that the advent of modem politics might instead de
mand greater philosophical attentiveness to premodern political thought as a
way of orienting ourselves in our present situation. Here the contrast between
Constant and Tocqueville is instructive. Constant's commitment to modernity
was both political and philosophical. Tocqueville's analysis of modem politics
surpasses Constant's precisely because he avoided such commitment, trying

instead to free himself from the unphilosophical passions driving both ancients
and modems. Tocqueville's first commitment was to philosophy. Ferry and
Renaut, on the other hand, are philosophically committed to modernity tout
court, a commitment that borders on decisionism. Little wonder, then, that they
now find themselves with a Nietzsche problem.
Given that Ferry and Renaut's latest volume is a collaborative effort, and
of their contributors do not fully share their approach, their own

many
Nietzsche problem does not dominate the book. Vincent Descombes, for exam
the French Nietzscheans the

ple, limits himself to a
critical analysis of of
1960s, exposing with his characteristic sharpness its intellectual sloppiness and
300 Interpretation
not-so-hidden agendas. Pierre-Andre Taguieff takes another tack, documenting

at length the rhetorical continuities between German anti-liberalism (Nietzsche
L'
and Spengler) and its French counterpart (from Maistre to Action Frangaise).
And Robert Legros provides a thoughtful exposition of Nietzsche's critique of
metaphysics, showing how it necessarily leads to a new vitalistic conception of
the individual.
Other authors fare less well, showing all too clearly how much perspective
is needed to understand the father of perspectivism. Alain Boyer, for instance,
Nietzsche," "think"
evidently wishes to be "against but only manages to

Nietzsche. Turning to the questions that open Beyond Good and Evil "Why
Boyer leaps into Nietzsche's decisionist trap,
untruth?"
truth? Why not rather

choice."
Andre Comte-
writing that "the choice of rationality is an ethical
Sponville, on the other hand, gives us the most self-indulgent and moralizing
contribution to the volume, never getting beyond the reductio ad Hitlerum.
About the French Nietzscheans of the 1960s, Vincent Descombes observes here
that "when our authors invoke him, it is less to cite his analyses or hypotheses
reader."
than to have a moral effect on the The same might also be said of the
less reflective French neohumanists today.
The contribution of Ferry and Renaut is of course more thoughtful, but does
little to free them from their self-incurred tutelage to modem thought. They
begin promisingly enough with Tocqueville and Constant, only to assert soon
democracy"
after that "the fact of also imposes a philosophical choice upon
argumentation"
us: either a rational "ethics of consistent with democracy (J.

"neoconservative"
Habermas, K.-O. Apel, J. Rawls), or a revival of tradition
in a world without God (A. Maclntyre, L. Strauss, Nietzsche). This is a reveal

ing opposition. While it accurately reflects the choice between progressive ra
tionalism and conservative antirationalism, it ignores Nietzsche's (and
Strauss's) rejection of just that alternative. Ferry and Renaut seem to sense that
Nietzsche fits uncomfortably into these categories, speaking of "the strange mix
him."
of tradition and
modernity that characterizes But they treat this as a
contradiction or limitation of Nietzsche's thought rather than as a clue to its
essence. Nietzsche would have said that his philosophy is a "philosophy of the
future"
precisely because it transcends the family quarrel between rational and
antirational modems, teaching us to will truth and untruth simultaneously.

What he challenges is not reason as such, but the Platonic teaching that reason
may be equated with happiness and goodness. By transforming reason from an
"health"
end to a means-to-another-end (the of the "species"), Nietzsche in
vents a new morality to replace both Socratic rationalism and Christian revela
tion. (And since Christianity is just "Platonism for the
masses,"
Socrates is the
real target of this moral coup d'etat.)
The only contributor to seize on Nietzsche's unique position in modem
thought is Philippe Raynaud, for whom "Nietzsche's thought should be taken
Book Reviews 301
as a privileged means for the

modernity."
self-critique of He calls Nietzsche an

"educator"
whose developing critique of reason must be traced throughout his

works, up to those later writings which Raynaud believes open the possibility
of a limited rationalism after perspectivism. "If Nietzsche knew how to make

the Enlightenment an instrument of his critique of reason, we must leam to use
'irrationalism'
his as a means of continuing the emancipation begun by the
Enlightenment."
Raynaud says that Weber and the German neo-Kantians did
just that, and that we should follow on the path they marked out. Nietzsche's
thought must not be treated merely as just one philosophy among others, but
ideals."
rather as "the condition of the survival of the Enlightenment's
Whatever one makes of Raynaud's defense of Weber, it has the virtue of
taking Nietzsche seriously enough simply to say that he was right. Raynaud's
Nietzsche offers us a choice to reflect upon, not a philosophical fait accompli.
Any humanism that wishes to be more than a decisionism must reflect on that
choice and not just because of Nietzsche. For what Nietzsche shares with all
the great thinkers, including Kant, is a self-conscious rejection of clas

modem
sicalphilosophy Christian revelation, from which certain consequences had

and
to be drawn. Kant's categorical imperative and Nietzsche's perspectivism are,

to be sure, radically opposed conclusions drawn from that rejection. But they
still share the same premise: ni Socrate, ni Jesus. If the French neohumanists
Kant"
wish to undertake a real "return to without finding themselves unwitting
exponents of Nietzsche, they might do well to retrace Kant's steps. That would
mean beginning, not with the fait accompli of modernity, but with this deeper
and more troubling ni-ni.
NOTES
1. La pensee 68. Essai sur V anti-humanisme contemporain (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), translated
(badly) into English as French Philosophy of the Sixties (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1990).
2. Heidegger et les modernes (Paris: Grasset, 1988), translated as Heidegger and the Moderns
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
L'
3. Alain Renaut, ere de I'individu. Contribution a une histoire de la subjectivite (Paris:
Gallimard, 1989), pp. 210-21. An English translation of this work will soon appear in the "New
L'
French
Thought"
series at Princeton University Press. Luc Ferry, Homo aestheticus. invention du
gout a
I'
age democratique (Paris: Grasset, 1990), pp. 199-254, translated as Homo Aestheticus
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

4. The form of this return to Kant still remains frustratingly obscure in their works. The writing
of the young Fichte (as meticulously interpreted by Alexis Philonenko) is often invoked as a model,
as is Kant's Critique of Judgment, but the systematic articulation of the new philosophie criticiste
has never been On these two models, see Renaut's Le Systeme du droit. Philosophie et
offered.
de Fichte (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986), and Ferry's

three-
droit dans la pensee
volume Philosophie politique (Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France, 1984-85), especially vol. 1
(pp. 109 ff.) and vol. 2 (pp. 139 ff.).

5. A good example is Ferry's treatment of Leo Strauss, which opens the first volume of Philo
s-
302 Interpretation
ophie politique. Ferry seems to recognize that Strauss's revival of la querelle des anciens et mod
ernes is an important response to Nietzsche's challenge. Yet rather than examine that response as it
presents itself, he rejects it out of hand as a species of misguided (if not dangerous) anachronism.
The has disappeared, therefore (concludes Ferry) its political philosophy is

ancient political world
irrelevant today. That Socratic philosophy begins in a critique of ancient political practice never
seems to occur to him.
Seth Benardete, The Rhetoric of Mortality and Psychology: Plato's Gorgias
and Phaedrus (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), vii + 205
pp. $39.95.
Will Morrisey
Rhetoric points to justice, appeals to moral indignation; it can be spurious.

eros"
Genuine rhetoric is "the science of (p. 2), and eros is the love of the
'pulls'
beautiful. Those different on the human soul are addressed in the

Gorgias, in which Socrates talks with rhetoricians about justice and rhetoric,
and the Phaedrus, in which Socrates talks with an amateur about the nature of
love and writing. This pair of dialogues has its counterpart: the Protagoras and
the Symposium, which also concern rhetoric and love, respectively, but carry
more theological weight. Benardete will title his book on the Protagoras and
the Symposium The Gods of the Poets. In it he will "explicate the theological
Phaedrus"
dimension of the Gorgias and the (p. 3).
Socrates'
interlocutors in the Gorgias are Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles.
Each of them exhibits rhetoric in his own way. The culminating example of the
rhetorician, Callicles, conceives of himself as a hard-nosed realist. But he is
not real, existing nowhere but in a Platonic dialogue. This suggests that rhetoric
is, as people nowadays like to say about all manner of things, problematic.
Gorgias is an optimistic man, believing as he does that rhetoric is all-power
ful. "If Gorgianic rhetoric has the power Gorgias claims for it, it would neces
sarily follow that the best city in speech of the Republic could be realized
time"
anywhere on earth at any (p. 5). Socrates, by contrast, seems profoundly

disadvantaged in comparison to the rhetorician with the power of eloquence.
Socrates'
shoelessness symbolizes his indifference to self-protection. If talking
were baseball, Socrates would be Shoeless Joe Jackson, a great player ("the
saw,"
best natural hitter I ever according to Ty Cobb) accused and convicted of
wrongdoing, and punished by being banned from the game.
for force "within the

city"
If Gorgias is right, there would be no need (p.

17). This means that rhetoric mustactually be able to make fellow-citizens just,
and therefore peaceful among themselves. But the rhetorician as rhetorician
Socrates'
does not know justice, as questioning quickly reveals. A rhetorician
must know how to appear to know. It may be that "The city no more knows
justice than the rhetorician knows an art, and in their mutual ignorance the
unjust"
rhetorician sometimes fails to guess what the city is going to decide is

Book Reviews 304
(p. 28), and will perish like some hapless, unshod philosopher. To resolve this
problem Gorgias would have to imitate Socrates, whose justice consists "in
justice"
justice"
making speeches about as part of his quest for "the truth about
(p. 30).
Gorgias'
Polus complains that Socrates has exploited sense of shame. Polus

He
pleasures"
is a man of "austere political (p. 38) killing, robbing, exiling.

is no erotic. Nor is he the sort of political man whose soul thrills at visions of
41), however; his "flatters the

conventional"
honor. He is "deeply (p. rhetoric
people on the sternness of their morality and indulges their taste for the happi
if it
tyranny"
ness of (p. 44). Rhetoric treats the mind as were the body, assum
ing that suffering brings understanding while appealing to the pleasure of

rhetoric"
dishing out punishment. "There seems to be something tragic about
(p. 54). Rhetoric puts a premium on convincing, and ends in needing to replace
real whiplashes with the slings and arrows of outrageous verbiage. Rhetoric
thus imitates "the historical drift of language itself from the concrete to the
'spirit'
abstract, the corporeal to the noncorporeal (p. 56), as when the word
'wind'
starts out to mean and ends up meaning something very much more
impressive. It is regrettable that the "the linguistic movement from body to

is
random,"
for any
good"
mind at and "not directed by the mind (p. 56). Body

still rales the chattering soul. This is the secret of morality, which requires that
souls exist like bodies in an afterlife. Rhetoric or punishment-justice "operates
pain"
solely within the confines of pleasure and (p. 58) even as it supposes
itself, or asks others to suppose, that it soars above pleasure and pain. The
'fatherland'
is the political equivalent of rhetoric's moral individual. In both in
wrongdoing"
stances, "a nonentity that can do no wrong is denounced for (p. 59).
Callicles does not know "the extent to which morality is essential to rheto
ric"
(p. 61). In parading his soi-disant realism he undercuts himself, as may be
seen in his other self-contradictory role as the aristocrat devoted to the demos,
"a love that dares
name"
not speak its (p. 64). Socrates annoys Callicles be

cause Socrates is not a real man. Grow up, Socrates. Yet, "for a proponent of
manliness," thin-skinned"
real Callicles "is awfully (p. 68). You cannot coher

ently "speak up for Achilles in the language of Thersites, who takes straggle
booty"
over natural right and ancestral right as a quarrel over (p. 71). Callicles
is more erotic Polus, but his eros is badly directed. "Democratic equality
than
books"
is on the in imperial Athens, "but the stmt of the tyrant is in everyone's
heart"
(p. 74). When Socrates praises self-rule, Callicles loses his temper. Cal
licles wants to transcend the body and be pure will, with no limits to his de
sires. He needs Hades not for purposes of punishment but because "life on
him
satisfaction"
earth can never bring enough (p. 76). "What the Gorgias
contains is a proof that the city and the soul are different in kind, and no
mapping of the one onto the other is possible. The soul is of

necessity incoher
ent if the city is its
model"
(p. 78).
305 Interpretation
"Between the spurious corporeality of hedonism and the equally spurious
morality of soul, philosophy shines through. Its orderliness is grounded in the

ignorance."
ordered disorderliness of knowledge of (p. 90). Gorgias, Polus,
and Callicles "can be joined because the rationality of Gorgias already con
tained the willfulness of the thumoeidetic, and the vindictiveness of Polus al
Callicles"
ready shared in the pleasures of (p. 91). Gorgias-Polus-Callicles

parallels the class structure of the city in speech and the soul-structure seen in
the Republic. The tensions among them are assuaged in the Republic because
in the Republic force supplements talk from the beginning and the talk is of
justice as the common good and of the need for law. The city cannot be trans
figured, but it it can be moderated. Genuine justice is to do as the philosopher
perplexed"
does, "to make another (p. 97), not to satisfy the quest for certitude.
Professor Benardete and his books have been considered perplexing. This ob
servation need not be the basis for any indignant accusations, however, al
though it probably sometimes is.
Surrounding the political, the city, the conventional, is nature. This is where
Socrates'
the Phaedrus comes in, walk in the woods. The Phaedrus has two
parts, the set of three erotic speeches and the discussion of the art of writing.
To find unity in these parts, Benardete suggests, one should take love speeches,
in which a lover "attempts to induce through speech what he himself experi
enced through the senses, as the model for the transformation of any set of
knowledge"
experiences into (p. 104). It is not so much that carnal knowledge
foreshadows noesis, as that self-knowledge and scientific or universal knowl
edge are in tension (knowledge of oneself cannot simply be generalized) and
yet in need of one another.
Phaedrus loves books. Socrates loves reality. "If Phaedrus had had his way,
it"
love would be as easy as picking up a book and reading (p. 107). But letters
can be deceptive, even the letter of the law:
The law is necessarily carnal. Its competence cannot include knowledge of soul.
Socrates'
knowledge of soul, then, is outside the law; but it is not criminal in itself
and can become so only if Socrates is forbidden to converse and advance his
Socrates'
knowledge. identification of conversation philosophy is the ultimate

with
defenseof philosophy against every form of tyranny (Xenophon Memorabilia

1.233-37). (P. 112)
Philosophy begins in a quest for self-knowledge, simply knowledge of

not
opinion-definitions imposed from without by the laws. "The one science need
Socrates"
is, the philosopher "as its

psychology that has
ful is a that one
judged"
test case, in light adequacy

of which its own can be (p. 115).
The body-lover, the one who writes the speeches Phaedrus so admires,
wants to tyrannize in one sense moderate, that is, discipline or control his
philosophy"
the beloved's "access to (p. 124). The lover is

beloved, blocking "incarnate."
incarnate"
"hubris (p. 125), perhaps with the emphasis on Only

Book Reviews 306
philosophic moderation cannot be imposed by the tyrant. Nonetheless, the
philosophic lover cannot afford to ignore carnal or political things, because

tyranny competes with philosophy in the seduction of precisely those souls that
are most inclined to tyranny. "Philosophy is thus compelled to be always en
gaged in a defense of what is potentially hostile to it old-fashioned virtue that
(p. 125).
philosophy"
is wholly by
uninformed
Socrates'
daimo-
Central to Benardete's book is a chapter on the agent of
nion. The daimonion recalls Socrates to himself and keeps him out of politics.
eros"
It permits him to be daring in another way, to be "the Prometheus of (p.

133). Recalled to himself, Socrates seeks to know himself. His psychology
"leaves room for law and convention to give shape to the gods who lead men
beyond
themselves,"
gods whose "conventionality reflects in turn the indeter

(p. 136). "The law fills in
cosmos"
minacy of the structure of the what nature

i's"
sketches. It dots her (p. 136). "To look at the gods too much is a dangerous
link
self-forgetting"
form of (p. 138). Still, symbolically the gods nature with

understanding"
reason; "the way to understand nature is through the of the

symbol of the gods. "The philosopher alone is devoted to the use of those
reminders"
reminders as (p. 144).

Love is seeing and asking questions. One properly loves "one's better half
"special"
(p. 149), which may notbe fully known. One's better half is not or
individualized; this love distinguishes the philosopher from all other human
'abstract.'
types, who find philosophic eroticism too

self-motion,"
"Eros splits into the motion of ascent and the motion of two
motions that are split and paired (p. 152). "The spell of the city is broken by
eros" law-lover,"
(p. 153); Benardete starts to say "there never was a before
being called back by his philological knowledge that "Philonomos (law lover)
Rome"
occurs on a Jewish inscription from (p. 153, n. 5). Lawgiving is associ
ated with writing, as in the Egyptian hieroglyphics or sacred writing. Law

persuades"
neither "argues nor (p. 157).

Plato manages to combine writing with erotic reason. The danger in combin
ing an art such as writing with eroticism is the danger of drowsy enchantment.
The Muses like Sirens "who test through

past"
are enchantment those who sail
(p. 163). Still, enchantment is necessary as the first step to disenchantment,

just as the enchantment with Plato's writings can be the first step toward philos
book"
ophy. Disenchantment requires one to see that "the world is not a (p.
167), but only after hoping that it is. If the one thing needful in this world is
knowledge of and enchantment by a book, then the gods once ruled but have
withdrawn, leaving their commands behind. differs from the This opinion
Socratic view, writing to the beautiful and the beautiful to
which subordinates
wisdom. Still, Socrates does come down to us as a character in books. He
avoids being a commanding, and succeeds in

being a perplexing, character by
harkening to a poetic character, Odysseus, who wards off the spell of Circe by
understanding part of nature.
Kenneth Hart Green, Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the
Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1993), xiv + 278 pp., $59.50 cloth, $21.95 paper.
Susan Orr
American University
The battle over the legacy of Leo Strauss is at its most heated when consid
ering the question of which place ought to have primacy over man's soul,
Jerusalem or Athens. It is fitting that the lines should be drawn at this most
central point. As Strauss himself states in Natural Right and History:
The fundamental question, therefore, is whether men can acquire knowledge of the
good without which they cannot guide their lives individually collectively by the
or
unaided effort of their natural powers, or whether they are dependent for that
knowledge on Divine Revelation. No alternative is more fundamental than this:
human guidance or divine guidance.1
That we should care about the answer is no longer in dispute. It is not
sufficient to ignore this central question in order to concentrate on the less

controversial elements of Strauss's teaching, such as how to read texts care
fully. Shadia Drury, for one, has made it impossible not to answer this question
Staples'
forthrightly. More recently, Brent scathing piece in the New York
Vistas,"
Times, "Undemocratic to an ever-increasing interest in debunk

attests
Strauss.2
ing Leo While Mr. Staples, for instance, distorts Strauss into a vulgar,
authoritarian bully, there are more serious critiques of Strauss's project, and
those who denounce him are aided by a dissension already present among his
students.
Although the geographic lines are more than fluid, there is an acknowledged
Coast" Coast"
split between what have been termed "West and "East Straus
sians. The West Coast Straussians, led by Harry V. Jaffa and his students,
believe that Strauss never held religion in disdain. Instead, they take him liter
when he writes that neither the philosopher nor the theologian can refute
ally
For his West Coast followers, when Strauss appears skeptical, he is
other.3
the
his focus God the Jewish
anything but dogmatic. to and
Pointing steadfast on
question, they also maintain that a failure to take Strauss literally when he
argues that surface is important is a critical one, for it is a failure to understand
his project: "There is no surer protection against the understanding of anything
despising the obvious and the surface. The

than taking for granted or otherwise
problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is

308 Interpretation
the heart of
things."4
Since Strauss is most respectful to Jerusalem on the sur
face, the West Coast argues, a failure to take his approach seriously is a grave
mistake. As the West Coast understands it, it is a failure to understand that the
God.5
philosopher must stay open to the possibility of the call of Ever more
nuanced than the West Coast, the East, with Thomas Pangle as its most outspo
ken representative, prefers to shade Strauss's teaching about revelation, sug
gesting that the more serious students understand the political nature of this
teaching, one intended to inculcate moral virtue in students lacking the natural
gifts required for philosophy. They point to passages, abundant in Strauss, such
as,
For both philosophy and the Bible proclaim something as the one thing needful, as
the only thing that ultimately counts, and the one thing needful proclaimed by the
Bible is the opposite of that proclaimed by philosophy: a life of obedient love
versus a life of free insight. In every attempt at harmonization, in every synthesis
however impressive, one of the two elements is sacrificed, more or less subtly but
in any event surely, to the other: philosophy, which means to be the queen, must
be made the handmaid of revelation or vice
versa.6
For modem minds, the appeal of independent inquiry is undeniable. Unwilling

to yoke themselves to the burden of obedience, East Coast Straussians presume
Athens'
victory. rarely give credence to Jerusalem or the arguments that
They
Strauss makes for the faithful city. Instead, East Coast Straussians insist that
Strauss sided unequivocally with Athens. Choosing his words carefully, Allan
Bloom writes in his encomium to his teacher, "Leo Strauss was a philosopher.
He would have never said so himself, for he was too modest and he had too
much reverence for the rare human type and the way of life represented by that
title to arrogate it to himself, especially in an age when its use has been so
cheapened."7
By sidestepping the question of revelation, Bloom finesses the

real question as to why Strauss never referred to himself as a philosopher; he
cuts off the question at the root of what Strauss himself calls the debate over
"the alternatives or the antagonists in the drama for the human soul."8
In this
way, religion becomes simply a matter of culture or accident. Inevitably, the
more radical East Coast Straussians, like Thomas Pangle, go so far as to col
lapse the debate into a contest between philosophy and poetry, forswearing any
distinction between Hesiod's Theogony and
Genesis.9
Against this backdrop, it comes as a pleasure to read Kenneth Hart Green's

carefulstudy of Strauss in Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in
the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss. Green, a student of Alexander
Altmann,
Marvin Fox, and Emil Fackenheim, decided to investigate Leo Strauss and his
understanding of the Jewish problem for his dissertation, and this book is a
refinement of that project. Green looks at this question from the perspective of
Jerusalem. His underlying concern is simple: Should Strauss be understood as
friend or foe?
Book Reviews 309
Green's book is meticulous in scope and painstakingly laid out. His master
ful analysis of both the texts and subtexts as well as the commentary written on
Strauss is breathtaking over one hundred pages of copious endnotes are in

themselves a
study which yield a fair treatment of the students of Strauss.
When he finds fault with a student of Strauss, his criticisms are firm, but
always done with a gentle hand; more often than not, they are justly deserved.
Even if one ends up disagreeing with Green, there is no question that all who
take the time to work through his book will find their efforts rewarded. The
analysis of Strauss's earlier works alone will prove fruitful, as Green spends a
good deal of time analyzing Strauss's youthful turn from Spinoza to Maimo
nides. Green has done Strauss's students a good turn by exploring his
all of
earlier work with such care. For example, his discussion of the insights that
Strauss gleans from G. E. Lessing is particularly illuminating. Green maintains
that Strauss drew three critical lessons from Lessing that will sound familiar to
all students of Strauss: that the Enlightenment's success is attributable to its
mockery of the sacred; that its material success is ultimately ambiguous; and
finally, that laying out the arguments of the quarrel between ancients and mod
ems in dialectical form is way to write about controversial topics.
a prudent
As Green admits, he began studying the contribution of Leo Strauss to

when
contemporary Judaism, he expected to find that interest in Judaism was of

peripheral concern to Strauss. But the more he studied, the more he was de
lighted to discover that the Jewish question was central to Strauss's understand
ing of the human condition. As Strauss often reminds us, the Jewish problem is
the quintessential human problem. Green appreciates Strauss's ability to dem
onstrate that the Jewish problem cannot be solved by the modem answers of
either assimilation or Zionism. As Green's analysis suggests, Strauss's answer
to the problem of modernity requires a return to Maimonides.

Green's thesis is simple: once discovered the Maimonidean project,
having
Strauss never turns back. Although he acknowledges the aforementioned debt
to Lessing as well as to other Jewish intellectuals, such as Hermann Cohen,
Green thinks that Maimonides alone provided remedy for the Strauss with a
modem quandary. Carefully following Strauss's method, Green notes the ob
vious first: on the surface of all Strauss's work, Maimonides "receives less
philosopher"
obvious criticism than any other Jewish (p. 5). Green easily an
swers the question of why Strauss chose Maimonides: "Strauss came to see
Maimonides as a wise thinker and teacher who arose in the midst of a

uniquely
similar crisis, and who had beenresolve the crisis by achieving a "per
able to
fect,'
though unconventional, balance between philosophy, religion, morality,
politics"
and (pp. xii-xiii).
The task which sets for himself is difficult to say the least: to discern
Green
the relationship between Leo Strauss and Maimonides. The questions that this
project implies are plentiful. Why would a modem Jew turn to Maimonides? Is
destine-
a successful return even conceivable, or has modem science, with its
310 Interpretation
tion of teleology, made the way back impossible? The difficulties that Green's
study raises are more than academic; they point to fundamental and permanent
problems. To those unfamiliar with Strauss, an absolute return seems as impos

sible as an absolute embrace of progress.
Through Green's study, we are reminded that Strauss teaches us that the
Jews have been both the greatest beneficiaries and the greatest sufferers from
the playing out of modernity. In many ways, the Jews have served as a perma
nent rebuke to modem man's attempt to overcome his natural limits. As Strauss
remarks,
Finite, relative problems can be solved; infinite, absolute problems cannot be

solved. In other words, human beings will never create a
society which is free of
contradictions. From every point of view it looks as if the Jewish problem is the
symbol of the human problem as a social or political
problem.10
manifest
Green understands this problem and, as a man faithful to Jerusalem, appreciates

Strauss's willingness to take seriously what a return to Jerusalem means.
Green understands that clarity cannot be achieved simply by pointing to

Strauss's extensive studies on Maimonides, for that course is not without pit
falls either. Strauss's exegetical texts on Maimonides are by far his most enig
matic. The first difficulty is what to make of Maimonides: Does he side with
reason or faith? Is he a Jew first or a philosopher? If we can unravel that
Maimonides'
difficulty, then the next question is, Does Strauss approve of
choice? relationship between Strauss and Maimonides can seem

Untangling the
at times a task worthy of Sisyphus, but this is the
daunting goal which Green
sets for himself.
The first thing that will puzzle the reader familiar with Strauss is the title
itself: Jew and Philosopher'} This will no doubt prove troublesome to some.
The difficulty is, as already mentioned, that Strauss insists that one cannot be
both. No synthesis of the two alternatives is ever possible. The challenge pres
ent in the title is not lost on Green, although the answer is anything but clear to
him. As Green understands Strauss, the formulation that theology and philoso
phy in permanent opposition, which all cursory readers of Strauss know, is
are
simply his first formulation. Green insists that "there must have been something
in Strauss's deeper views as a thinker which overrode the
previously mentioned
dichotomy, and which allowed him to pursue his concern to understand both
what it means to be a Jew and what it means to be a
philosopher, and yet not
be guilty of the muddleheadedness which he attributed to Moses
Mendelssohn"
(p. 143, n. 1). It is this

underlying theme that Green attempts to flesh out in
Jew and Philosopher. From the outset, Green begins on the offensive
by insist
ing that Strauss be understood as both philosopher and Jew.
Ironically, he be
gins by resisting the surface teaching.
Green asserts that one cannot understand Strauss's Jewishness as simple fa
milial loyalty, as a debt owed out of justice. In so
doing, he reopens the dispute
begun in public with Shadia Drury 's The Political Ideas
of Leo Strauss, but
Book Reviews -311
already present in his students beforehand. Green's temperate language and
careful reading of Strauss compel us to consider freshly where Strauss stood on
this most important question.
The tension, inherent in the title, remains throughout the entire book. Ulti
mately, Green thinks Strauss took a position friendly to revelation: at the end of
the first chapter, he suggests, albeit tentatively, that Strauss is best understood
theist'"
as a "'cognitive a title which Green thinks is appropriate because of
Strauss's simultaneous concern with the whole and his view that a complete
understanding of the whole is beyond the reach of man (p. 27 and p. 167, n.
127). Green's argument is that while synthesis of reason and revelation may be
impossible, harmony is not, a distinction which he thinks is critical.
Rather than conceiving of Strauss's thought as progressing through distinct

stages, he sees it as becoming ever more penetrating, once he discovers Mai
monides. The Maimonidean turn is never gainsaid, only deepened. Although
Green understands it differently, his analysis mirrors Bloom's, but with a criti
caldifference. Remember that, according to Bloom, Strauss went through three

phases which, though distinct, signified a deepening insight. The first stage,
"Pre-Straussian"
which Bloom calls the Strauss, is Strauss as the intellectual
historian; the second stage is marked by his discovery of esoteric writing; the
third and final stage, by works such as Thoughts on Machiavelli and The City
and Man, in which Strauss clearly prefers ancient modes and orders to their
modem
alternatives.11
In keeping with the Bloom perspective, there is little

discussion of Strauss and revelation. Bloom confines his comments to those
which imply that Maimonides, like Plato before him, saw only the utility of
religion for good citizenship.
Green, in contrast, sees the evolution of Strauss's thought through the prism
of Strauss's work on Maimonides, and hence through the medieval straggle
between reason and revelation, philosophy and theology. Akin to Bloom's

analysis, Green sees Strauss's progress marked roughly by the following three
books: Spinoza's Critique of Religion, Philosophy and Law, and Persecution

and the Art of Writing.
For Green, Strauss makes the discovery that Maimonides is a superior
thinker to Spinoza while working Spinoza's Critique of Religion. He argues

on
that Strauss first notices that philosophy in modernity is not driven by a longing
for a comprehensive knowledge of the whole that may never be achieved, but
instead by passion or will; indeed modem philosophy thinks it provides a com
prehensive account of the whole. As a result, Strauss begins to grasp, that,
although Spinoza champions reason and freedom, he ultimately distorts both.

Eventually, Strauss's understanding crystallizes into the familiar critique which
Green characterizes as follows,

in the process of freeing itself from theology and the
Simply put, modern reason
divine will has destroyed itself as reason by eventually reducing itself to human
It is Strauss to be motivated not by pure love of wisdom, which
will. revealed by
would compel it to encounter theology as a serious and worthy opponent (if not as
312 Interpretation
"atheism," ire,"
a teacher), but to be motivated by or by "antitheological or with
certain modem revisions by Epicureanism. (P. 19)

As Strauss began to understand, Spinoza may have loved the Jews, but he did
not love Judaism. His fervent desire was to free man from the tyrannical rale of
a priestly class and a crippling fear of God. Strauss sees Spinoza as the quintes
sential modem.
Once Strauss discovers that Maimonides is a deeper thinker than Spinoza, he

must answer how Maimonides understands the seemingly contradictory nature
of man, i.e., that his end is the "unconditional search for the highest and even
truth,"
the most comprehensive while "denying the adequacy of man's intellect

abilities"
to attain the highest truths by his own efforts and (p. 89). Strauss,
Maimonides'
then, must necessarily confront understanding of the limits of
reason and revelation, especially with regard to his peculiar teaching about
prophetology. This is the path Strauss pursues in Philosophy and Law.

With the first stage, Strauss discovers that Spinoza presupposes the falsity of
revelation, rather than disproves its possibility. At this point, Green argues that
Strauss was content with a negative vindication of revelation and, indeed, an
understanding of reason and revelation with which conventional scholars would

find no quarrel. But Green finds Strauss unsatisfied with this reading; he still
has unanswered questions, questions which he attempts to address in Philoso
phy and Law. During this time, Green thinks that Strauss begins to consider
whether a positive vindication of revelation is possible and whether the modem

crisis of reason can be solved. He also begins to wonder why Maimonides
insists upon philosophizing as a Jew. The central question he considers, which
has bearing on all the other problems, is why man needs prophets.
a
During this time, Green notes that Strauss leams much about the Maimoni
dean project by studying other medieval thinkers, such as Averroes, Avicenna,
and Alfarabi. But, Strauss begins to detect a deeper teaching in Maimonides.
Maimonides'
To his credit, Green refuses to agree that Strauss collapses
thought with the Islamic thinkers. But he does think that Strauss gains a critical
insight from Avicenna, i.e., that the Maimonidean approach to prophetology as

a science is more beholden to Plato than Aristotle. Strauss begins to see
that,
far from being overtaken by Spinoza's attack, Maimonides had foreseen it, and
found it wanting. As Green writes of Strauss's formulation:
For Maimonides, human knowledge can always surpass Aristotle through prophecy,
i.e., the prophet always attains to a greater theoretical height than the philosopher,
even with regard to superlunar physics and its attendant metaphysics. Thus, as
Maimonides'
Strauss further discerned, entire approach may not
actually have been
so finally defeated
by the transition from medieval to modem science, since his
argument is rooted in a prior epistemological critique of all possible or
philosophy
science: it would seem man was, is, and always will be in need of revelation to
know the truth about God and the angels, and about creation versus (P
eternity
65)
Book Reviews 313
Green suggests that, at this moment, Strauss begins to see that the fundamental
problem that Maimonides had to address was not a scientific problem, but a
political problem, i.e., how to inspire human beings who are not philosophi
cally disposed to choose the good; the answer is through the aid of the
prophets:
. . . mankind requires the true prophets (such as Moses and those who imitate his
perfection), who are perfect in all necessary human faculties (i.e., intellect,
imagination, morality, courage, divination, leadership), and who can convey a law
which is adequate to meet the complexities and anomalies of ordinary human
experience, while orienting it to the highest theological truths by which a virtuous

Maimonides'
political life should be guided. The Platonic basis for position was
thus uncovered by Strauss in prophetology: once divine revelation is accepted as
binding law, complete freedom is guaranteed for human reason, and the primacy of
the theoretical life for man is rooted in the divine law itself, nay, in the prophet
himself. (P. 104)
Green contends that Strauss looks to Maimonides as the preeminent guide to

this political problem because Maimonides understands that Jewish revelation
and classical rationalism are, in the end, compatible. Their essential agreement
consists in this: both agree regarding the necessity of moral law.

This final step is crystallized with Persecution and the Art of Writing when
Strauss realizes that a unification of Jerusalem and Athens is not as simple as

he had once supposed. Strauss refines his argument and brings the permanent
opposition of the two cities into sharper contrast. As Green writes,
"Averroistic"
In this scheme, which Strauss allows to be called although "with
ignorance,"
pardonable revelation or prophecy in one form or another is the access
to the truth peculiar to the city: politics must employ theology because religion,
imaginatively presents God (or the gods) as

which an active force devoted to
justice, functions in support of the moral life. The philosophic life, however, is
devoted to wisdom and claims to transcend the imaginative sphere, and hence
assigns revelation to opinion rather than to truth. (P. 123)
Obviously, it is this final articulation of the problem that lends itself to such
controversy because it is at this point that Strauss modifies the traditional ac

count of Maimonides in pursuit of an esoteric teaching that is subtle and often
misunderstood.
It is here that Strauss's critics claim that he ended up embracing Nietzsche.
Green chooses instead to argue Strauss, in his final formulation of the

that
tension between Jerusalem and Athens, "regarded his own tentative return to
Maimonides and to ancient wisdom as an option not fully anticipated by
Nietzsche, and hence as something which, if nothing else, would seem to rep
wave'
resent either the beginning of 'the fourth of modernity, or the only fun
altogether"
damental alternative to the modem (p. 149, n. 6).

314 Interpretation
discovery,"
In analyzing this part of Strauss's "voyage of Green is forced to

address the central question forthrightly (p. 106). Interestingly, Green entitles
the chapter where he addresses it "Maimonides as Esoteric Writer: Strauss's

Maimonides'
Rediscovery of the Philosopher's Categorical Imperative in

Guide."
This chapter will not fail to raise eyebrows.
No one will argue with Green that Maimonides is primary importance to

of
Strauss's formation. The argument, instead, will revolve around who Maimo
nides is, and finally, who Strauss is. Many argue that Maimonides is simply a
philosopher interested in preserving a safe haven for philosophy in the Jewish
world; he cloaks himself in Jewishlaw, but places his first loyalty with Athens.
As a philosopher, he is superior to Spinoza, but fundamentally at odds with
Jerusalem. Even if this is an accurate representation of Maimonides, it still
begs the question of where Strauss stands. But Green understands the predica
ment he has placed himself in and does not shy away from it, choosing instead
Maimonides'
to confront it head on. Green first asks: "Does position as philos
opher and Jewish thinker represent something unique in itself, which does not
format?"
merely reproduce the Platonic idea of esotericism in Jewish (p. 127).

In other words, he disputes Pangle's claim that the arguments are already pres
ent in their fullest form in the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.
Green argues that Maimonides does not reduce the quarrel to philosophy
versus poetry precisely because
"argument"
... the Jewish position is the best conceptualized and articulated for
divine revelation in terms of both its premises and its conclusions; and based on its
rationality" beginning"
"superior its argument was thought through "from the in
explicit and implicit opposition to the essential claims of philosophy. Consequently,
what Maimonides significantly adds to the quarrel between reason and
most
revelation that the ancients did not grasp is the full awareness of how powerful an
argument can be made against philosophy. In the Hebrew Bible one thing new has
been presented about the nature of God which is not present in any other
conception God's absolute moral character. (P. 130)

The Torah is, as Strauss often reminds us, "said in the Torah to be 'your
wisdom in the eyes of the
nations.""2
Thus, the Torah claims to be accessible

to reason. In a way inconceivable for the ancients, philosophy must respect
revelation. Zeus does not invoke honor, but fear; the Judeo-Christian God in
vokes both. But the fear man owes God is not fear of a capricious will, but a
fear of just punishment an essential difference from the pagan notion. Be
cause God is a moral being, as Green writes, with a hint of irony, the Bible
provides "a morality that issues in truly unconditional commands, or 'categori
imperatives'"
cal (pp. 133-34).
At the time, philosophy, which agrees with the Biblical understanding
same
of importance of morality, lacks teeth because the

the
clarity of moral law may
be only obvious to the wise man. In "Progress or Return," Strauss puts it in this
way, calling it a "philosophic lack of depth":
Book Reviews '315
Greek philosophy has frequently been blamed for the absence from it of that
ruthless examination of one's intentions which is the consequence of the biblical

demand for purity of the heart. "Know thyself means for the Greeks, know what it
means to be a human being, know what is the place of man in the universe
heart."
examine your opinions and prejudices, rather than "Search your This
philosophic lack of depth, as it is called, can consistently be maintained only if
God is assumed not to be concerned with man's goodness or is if man's goodness
assumed to be entirely his own affair. The Bible and Greek philosophy agree
indeed as regards the importance of morality or justice and as to the
insufficiency
of morality, but they disagree as to what completes morality. According to the
Greek philosophers, as already noted, it is understanding or contemplation. Now
this necessarily tends to weaken the majesty of the moral demands, whereas
humility, a sense of guilt, repentance, and faith in divine mercy, which complete
morality according to the Bible, necessarily strengthen the majesty of the moral
demands. (P. 37)
So how does Green think that Strauss sees the seemingly incompatible cities
of Jerusalem and Athens come together? The answer, for Green, appropriately
enough, is Socratic. Strauss understands why Socrates turned from looking at
the sun to looking at man, i.e., because a complete account of the whole is
elusive at best: modem science has
it. Man's understanding of
not captured
nature is always incomplete. Maimonides, like Socrates before him, was not
committed to any specific cosmology. As Green points out, revealed religion
shares this in common with Socratic philosophy: "revealed religion fundamen
tally rejects this world, i.e., the world of ordinary human experience and rea
soning, as the final moral standard, or even as a possible source for such a
is' sinful"
standard, since 'how manis essentially (p. 15). Thus, Green argues
that Jerusalem and Athens may live in harmony rather than be synthesized. By
returning to a Maimonidean approach, "they are taught how to respect and
another"
leam from one (p. 135).

In the closing chapter, Green does allow that deducing where Strauss finally
allies himself is difficult. In a sense, Green may have made it more difficult by
concentrating solely on the influence of Maimonides in Strauss's thought.

There are selections in the Strauss corpus where Maimonides is not omnipre
Philosophy,"
sent, such as "The Mutual Influence of Theology and "Progress

Civilization,"
or Return? The Contemporary Crisis of and "Jerusalem and

Reflections."
Athens: Some Preliminary These texts, one could argue, are

Strauss's own articulation of the struggle between reason and revelation. For a
complete understanding of Strauss's articulation of this fundamental human
problem, it would behoove us to study these texts carefully. But that task too is
Athens"
not without difficulty. Remember that in "Jerusalem and Strauss places

himself in the position of a beholder, a tenuous position that he knows is unten
able.
For Green, there are two possibilities. Strauss could have held religion to be
316 Interpretation
"unreason."
synonymous with In other words, Strauss could have been paying
only lip service to revelation. But in the end, Green thinks that this character
ization of Strauss is a distortion. As Green notes, it is important that Strauss
refuses to mock or dismiss revelation, rather he treats it with respect, some
thing that some of his students have failed to do and in so doing distort his
teaching. One cannot find a passage in Strauss that unequivocally buttresses
Athens at Jerusalem. In that regard, Green finds Strauss a friend
the expense of
to Jerusalem. In Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish

Thought of Leo Strauss, Green delicately suggests that the East Coast adherents
of Leo Strauss may have made the same fundamental error that Strauss attrib
utes to himself when he first began to study Spinoza: they have failed to under
Strauss because they do him

enough.13
stand not read literally
NOTES
1. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p.
74.
2. New York Times, November 28, 1994. See also Richard Bernstein's response, "A Very
Hero),"
Unlikely Villain (or New York Times, January 29, 1995. Bernstein gives a superficial
recounting of Strauss's contribution, arguing that Strauss was a traditional conservative. It is ironic
that Strauss is being placed with those who would certainly not claim him as one of their own, i.e. ,
the traditional conservatives, heirs of Burke, who argue that the old is synonymous with the good.
Civilization,"
3. Leo Strauss, "Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western in
Modern Judaism (Baltimore: The. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), vol. 1, p. 45.
4. Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 13.
Essay"
5. A careful reading of the "Introductory in Strauss's Spinoza's Critique of Religion
yields just such a reading.
6. Natural Right and History, pp. 74-75.

7. Allan Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 239.
Philosophy,"
8. Leo Strauss, "The Mutual Influence of Theology and The Independent Journal
of Philosophy, 3 (1979): 114.
9. See his introductory remarks to Strauss's Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, edited by
Thomas Pangle (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1983), and "The Platonism
of of Leo Strauss:
Jaffa,"
A Reply to Harry Claremont Review of Books, Spring, 1985.
Essay,"
10. Leo Strauss, "Introductory in Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York: Schoc-
ken, 1982), p. 6.
11. Giants and Dwarfs, pp. 246-50.
12. "Jerusalem Athens: Some Reflections,"
from The Cit\-
and
Preliminary College Papers,
No. 6 (The City College
New York, 1967), p. 5.
of
13. Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, p. 31.

Forthcoming
Leo Strauss How to Study Medieval Philosophy
Daniel Elazar The Book of Judges: The Israelite Tribal Federation and
Its Discontents
Chris Rocco Liberating Discourse: The Politics of Truth in Plato's

Gorgias
Paul Bagley Harris, Strauss, and Esotericism in Spinoza's Tractatus

Theologico-politicus
Christopher Kelly Rousseau's Philosophic Dream

ISSN 0020-9635 Interpretation, Inc.
Queens College
Flushing N.Y. 11367-1597
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I

Winter 1996 Volume 23 Number 2

127 Leo Strauss The Origins of Political Science and The

209 Abraham Anderson Descartes Contra Averroes? The Problem of

Faith and Reason in the Letter of Dedication

249 Thomas K. Lindsay Antiquing America: Reflections on Rahe's

297 Mark Lilla Ni Socrate, ni Jesus, Review of Pourquoi nous

ne sommes pas nietzscheens, edited by

303 Will Morrisey The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy:

307 Susan Orr Jew and Philosopher: The Return to

Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell Joseph Cropsey Ernest L. Fortin

Michael Blaustein Patrick Coby Thomas S. Engeman

Charles T. Rubin Leslie G. Rubin Susan Shell

Single copies available.

Postage U.S.: Canada $4.50 extra;

elsewhere $5.40 extra by surface mail (8 weeks

Payments: in U.S. dollars and payable by

(or the U.S. Postal Service).

The Journal Welcomes Manuscripts in Political Philosophy as Well as Those

Composition by Eastern Composition, Inc.,

Leo Strauss The Origins of Political Science and The

Abraham Anderson Descartes Contra Averroes? The Problem of

Faith and Reason in the Letter of Dedication

John Alvis Moby-Dick and Melville's Quarrel with America 223

Thomas K. Lindsay Antiquing America: Reflections on Rahe's

Mark Lilla Ni Socrate, ni Jesus, Review of Pourquoi nous

ne sommes pas nietzscheens, edited by

Will Morrisey The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy:

Susan Orr Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides

Copyright 1996 interpretation

Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell Joseph Cropsey Ernest L. Fortin

Charles T. Rubin Leslie G. Rubin Susan Shell

Single copies available.

Postage U.S.: Canada $4.50 extra;

elsewhere$5.40 extra by surface mail (8 weeks

(or the U.S. Postal Service).

The Journal Welcomes Manuscripts in Political Philosophy as Well as Those

Composition by Eastern Composition, Inc.,

mum of editorial changes.

These six lectures were delivered by Professor Strauss between October

the Strauss archives at the University of Chicago. The typescript contains

for a few corrections of misspellings and a few small changes in punctua-

interpretation, Winter 1996, Vol. 23, No. 2

tion, which we made without comment). We are grateful to Mr. Devin

in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the

(OCTOBER 27, 1958)

I begin with a word of thanks to my colleague and friend Herman Pritchett. I

Otherwise I would have presented a series of public lectures entirely on my

By political science we understand such a study of political things as is not

philosophy is a consequence of the distinction between science in general and

1996 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

interpretation, Winter 1996, Vol. 23, No. 2

we have made closer to

home, we suspect the existence of a connection between Hippodamus 's un

of the thought induces Aristotle to give

was led by ambition to be somewhat eccentric so that some thought he lived in

he wished to be known as learned in giving an account of nature as a It

We may wonder whether this is not5

a deserved punishment for the fact that we

non-philosophic political science, by a positivistic political science. That politi

positivistic view political philosophy is impossible. Yet the question raised by

opinion; they present themselves as unquestionable, but on reflection they

points to the fundamental question of political philosophy, and if therefore the