BMCR 2008.11.22, Greg Recco, Athens Victorious: Democracy

Greg Recco, Athens Victorious: Democracy in Plato's Republic.  Lanham,
MD:  Lexington Books, 2007.  Pp. vii, 253.  ISBN 9780739123263.
$75.00.

Reviewed by Jakub Jirsa, Charles University, Prague
([email protected])
Word count:  1256 words
-------------------------------
To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2008/2008-11-22.html
To comment on this review, see
http://www.bmcreview.org/2008/11/20081122.html
-------------------------------

Greg Recco's main thesis in Athens Victorious is that "Plato's Republic
deliberately demonstrates the superiority of the democratic
constitution" (1). According to him, the Republic supports political
and psychic freedom and connects the central democratic principle of
freedom with dialectic and philosophy.

Contemporary debate has indeed moved a long way from the dispute
between Popper and Vlastos concerning the totalitarian character of the
Republic.[[1]] For Recco is not alone in his attempt, which on the
general level tallies with the works of Peter Euben, Arlene Saxonhouse
or Sara Monoson. His question, though, is not whether Plato was a
totalitarian thinker, but whether he might have been a more-or-less
disguised democrat. Recco does not engage in the contemporary debate
too much; rather he focuses on a close reading of selected passages
from the text.[[2]] This close reading, together with his seeking for
truth hidden between the lines of the dialogue, Recco inherits from Leo
Strauss. On the other hand, he claims to focus on the argument, and he
writes that in his interpretation he follows the "drama of the
argument" (4).

This drama is structured in his book in the following way. The first
two chapters (pp. 15-71) discuss the tripartite psychology of Republic
IV, and focus especially on the role of the middle part (to
thumoeides). The main task of these two chapters is to show that
courage based on thumos is necessary for "citizenship and for
philosophy as Plato presents it" (62).

Chapter three (pp. 73-93) forms a transition between psychology and
politics and shows how Socrates' interpretation of his own trial
vitally connects philosophy and the polis. Recco convincingly argues
that Socrates' attitude to the laws focuses on duties rather than
rights, and that his acceptance of the death penalty as contrasted with
his refusal of several other ordinances (the trial of ten generals and
orders of the Thirty) reflects his deeper concern with what citizenship
actually means.

Chapters four and five (pp. 95-190) present a detailed discussion of
Republic VIII, dealing in more detail with timocracy, oligarchy and the
establishment of democracy. He sets his discussion of politeia in the
context of Hesiod's Theogony and Herodotus' "constitutional debate"
(Histories III.80-2).[[3]] Recco's point is to distinguish
constitutions by the objects they honor and not those they merely
desire. According to him, honor "explicitly assigns a lower value to
competing objects" and therefore serves as a better mark for
distinguishing different constitutions than desire (144-5). It is honor
connected with thumos that is the strongest force behind constitutional
changes, and Recco wants to show that democracy is considered as the
only regime which properly reflects the tripartite psychology discussed
in previous chapters.

The final Chapter, six  (pp. 191-239), argues for an essential
connection between democracy and the art of dialectic. If I understand
Recco's argument, he claims that education means basically a change of
perspective or orientation in our lives. Such a move is easiest in
liberal democracies, and dialectic is the high peak of education. It
follows that democracy and dialectic are best friends with each other.

Recco's project is an ambitious one: it argues for an interpretation
that is far from self-evident, without using much evidence other than
the text itself. However, I have several worries and questions about
the success of this project. I will start with general ones, proceeding
to more particular points that I still consider interesting for
readers. Recco's methodology at several places faces the serious
problem that faces any Straussian reading.[[4]] I do not mean
esotericism or elitism, but something much simpler. His interpretation
uses "errors", "contradictions" or indirect suggestions of "paradoxical
assessments" (e.g. 22, 99, 124, 217) as hints of a hidden meaning that
needs to be uncovered. But we do not have any credible tool by which to
distinguish "errors" that signal a secret meaning from real ones or
those that could be solved within a traditional interpretation equally
well.

The interpretation moreover does not seem to distinguish between a
liberal society and a democratic society.[[5]] Recco reads into Plato's
description of the democratic regime the virtues of liberal democracies
and so can conclude that Plato's democracy is the right environment for
philosophy. For example, according to him "democracy values freedom
above all" (145), and even though he examines license (exousia), which
he characterizes as arbitrariness (156), he does not consider Plato's
democratic freedom as mere arbitrariness. But what else it is when in a
democratic city one could found a city of one's own (Resp. 557d)?[[6]]

Recco's further support for reading the Republic as praising democracy
is that according to him the genesis of a democratic regime is
different from that of all other constitutions since Plato deliberately
removes it from the series of constitutional changes produced by
internal mutation alone (especially 153-4). But the text seems to
suggest something else. The genesis of democracy is firmly grounded in
oligarchy (Resp. 555b-d): it retains existing features, and acquires
new ones just as any other constitution, and it is not true that it
necessarily needs external intervention to be established (cf.
<greek>a)/neu tw=n e)/cw stasia/zei</greek> at 556e10).

It remains unclear why Recco translates to logistikon as the
"calculating" part of the soul. It is of course a possible translation,
but it is not the most common one and it is very loaded.[[7]] Since
Recco seems to understand to logistikon as a calculating device,
capable of no more than comprehending the conflict of motivations, he
claims that no previous interpretation has satisfactorily explained why
reason should rule, and considers existing attempts to do so "mildly
vexing" in their paternalism (192). I wonder which interpretations
Recco means, but just by looking into the Republic itself, couldn't its
supremacy (suggested already at 432a) be grounded in the fact that to
logistikon knows -- as the only soul-part that can -- what is good, and
indeed what is good for the entire soul and not just for itself
(441e4-7 and 442c5-8)?[[8]]

Finally, Recco's interpretation of dialectic takes, I believe, the
analogy with the senses in 530d6-7 and 532a3-5 too far. Recco claims:
"dialectic thus has the character of recognizing in ordinary
perception, as it is located in the characteristic activity of its
bodily organs, a drive towards truth . . . Progress in dialectic would
thus enable a kind of progress in perception itself -- not a rejection
of it, but an appreciation and strengthening of its proper role, which
is already to be a search for truth" (221, italics in original). Of
course, both perception and dialectic are essential features of Plato's
theory of knowledge: we start acquiring knowledge by looking at things
around us. But this epistemological interpretation demands much more
argumentation than Recco gives. The mere analogy between seeing and
thinking does not establish a firm ground for claiming that dialectic
(even partially) takes place already in the activity of a bodily organ.


Recco's book is truly ambitious and provocative. Several points in his
interpretation are important and well presented (e.g. his analysis of
citizenship in the Crito, his reading of Resp. VIII in its historical
context, or his focus on the genesis of different constitutions).
However, I am still inclined to believe that Plato's work is normative
in the sense that it tries to find a government which would "at best
help man achieve a moral goal in society, justice and good life" as
Finley puts it.[[9]] I think the government of Callipolis is an
aristocracy -- for doesn't the equality, which Recco so
enthusiastically praises in democracy (178), actually undermine the
entire project of philosopher-kings?


------------------
Notes:


1.   Neatly summarized and assessed by Brown, L. (1998): "How
Totalitarian is Plato's Republic?", in Ostenfeld, E. N. (ed.) Essays on
Plato's Republic, Aarhus, pp. 13-27.

2.   Compare especially Euben, P. (1990): The Tragedy of Political
Theory: The Road Not Taken, Princeton; Saxonhouse, A. (1996): Athenian
Democracy: Modern Mythmakers and Ancient Theorists, Notre Dame;
Monoson, S. (2000): Plato's Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics
and the Practice of Philosopy, Princeton. Of these books Recco mentions
and uses only Saxonhouse.

3.   In this context Recco surprisingly omits to take into account the
very genre "On the Politeia" with its normative and usually pro-Spartan
character. Cf. Menn, S. (2005): "On Plato's
<greek>*P*O*L*I*T*E*I*A</greek>" in Boston Area Colloquial in Ancient
Philosophy eds. J. J.Cleary and G. M.Gurtler, vol. 21, pp. 1-55.

4.   Cf. Burnyeat, M. (1985): "Sphinx Without a Secret", New York
Review of Books vol. 32, no. 9 (May 30, 1985), pp. 30-6.

5.   Not every democratic society has to be liberal: cf. the famous
notion of "illiberal democracies" from Zakaria, F. (2003): The Future
of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (W.W. Norton).

6.   As far as I can judge, lines Resp. 557b and 557d suggest a measure
of arbitrariness in any democratic polis that even threatens its unity.
Moreover, a strongly anti-Socratic anarchism is added to its
characterization (557e-558a). Arbitrariness in the democratic character
is described at Resp. 559d-e, 560b and 560d-561b. A more credible
interpretation seems to me the connection between freedom and justice
that is presented for example in Stalley, R. F. (1998): "Plato's
Doctrine of Freedom" in Proceedings of Aristotelian Society vol. 98,
issue 2, pp. 145-58. This idea then depicts Plato as a proponent of
what Isaiah Berlin calls positive liberty.

7.   Moreover, this understanding of to logistikon ignores the fact
that it is only one possible way of referring to this soul-part: Plato
uses to philomathes and to philosophon as well.

8.   Cf. John M. Cooper's articles "Plato's Theory of Human Motivation"
and "The Psychology of Justice in Plato" in his Reason and Emotion,
Princeton University Press, 1999.

9.   Finley, M. (1973): Democracy Ancient and Modern, Chatto and
Windus, p. 5.