The Great Books obscure a powerful democratic tradition running through history
ALSO, a story of mine, told from the perspective of one of the men who convicted Socrates
One of the knocks against the Great Books is that they are the records of the winners. These are books that people in power, with lots of resources, chose to propagate and preserve. And since they tend to represent the only remaining record of certain eras, reading the Great Books gives a distorted view of human history, thought, and behavior.
This is in contrast to our own time, when we have access to a much wider range of thought, representing many different points of view. I don't necessarily this unique in providing a broader range of viewpoints, I just think this is the difference between the long view and the short view. In the long view, there is always considerable selection and sieving. Ninety-nine point nine of what was written down doesn't survive, and 100 percent of the spoken word dies out too. If you look at contemporary ideas, there are many ideas that are almost entirely represented in blog posts or tweets, rather than books. Imagine someone a hundred years reading books from today--they will read many indictments of "wokeness"--but where will they read original "woke" documents? They might read, say, Roxane Gay or Ibram X. Kendi or Ta-Nehisi Coates, but these authors are relatively restrained in their texts. To really get the true flavor (i.e. trigger warnings for mentions of miscarriage, celebrations of Hamas attacks, essays in support of firing professors for their speech) you'd need to read Twitter or blogs--even newspaper editorials won't give you the full flavor. But most of those things won't be around in a hundred years.
I think it's the same when it comes to prior times. There is a systematic distortion in favor of the aristocratic over the democratic. It's not only that we tend to retain writing from powerful people (i.e. we have the speeches of the Athenian orators, but not the, surely equally plentiful, private letters of their wives), but that even when it comes to these people, there is a systematic tendency to retain only those that support aristocratic and oligarchic power.
This is nowhere more true than in the records of the Athenian philosophers. Almost everything we retain regarding politics and ethics in ancient Athens has a profoundly aristocratic bent: you cannot read Plato without seeing him run down ordinary citizens and extol aristocracy. The same tendency is less pronounced in Aristotle, but he too characterizes democracy as, essentially, rule by the poor, and writes extensively about how to give power to the best men, who he characterizes as the few. There is little sense in either author that there might be some wisdom in the masses, or even that it might be in their self-interest to direct their own fates.
What makes this surprising is that Athens was one of the most democratic societies in the ancient world. In very few other societies was the franchise so widely distributed, and in very few other societies did so many ordinary citizens play a role in governance.1 Their jury system is notable for this: every year they enrolled six thousand men to serve in their juries, out of maybe forty or fifty thousand eligible free men. This meant maybe 20 percent of the male population was playing an active role in deciding cases every year. Moreover, after the reforms of Pericles, jury-men were paid for their service, allowing farmers and artisans to serve.
Similarly, when you read the history of Rome, it is striking that almost all of the people who supported the democratic party (the Populares, in common parlance, although they were not a political party as we've come to understand the term) have come down to us as villains: amongst the Populares, the Gracchi brothers and Catiline are infamous villains. And Julius Caesar, the most famous of the Populares, has a decidedly mixed reputation, while amongst his assassins at least Brutus is extolled. In contrast, out of the aristocratic party, Cicero and Cato are held up as the models of Roman virtue, and only Sulla is portrayed as truly villainous.
What we lack from both Roman and Athenian sources is any positive justification for devolving more power onto the people. Indeed, the evolution of both political systems is portrayed not as the people demanding or deserving more power, but as a process of unsavory demagogues whipping the people into a fervor in order to win more power for themselves. In Plato, kingship and aristocracy are portrayed as more senior to democracy, and democracy is a fallen form of these systems.
But democracy, in the sense of rule by the people, is not a young form of governance. There's been much talk recently about how contact with the Iroquois, and their participatory democracy, might have spurred the Enlightenment. I have no opinion about that, but I think their example shows that democracy is very common. The Germanic peoples had a tradition of democracy, embodied in the ancient English Witengamot and in the Icelandic Althing, that degenerated into elective Kingship and eventually into absolutism, but which laid the groundwork (in a much more immediate way than did Rome’s example) for democratic systems in Britain and Scandinavia. The Mongol invasions infamously had to be halted three times for a Kurultai to elect the next Great Khan. The Veche was the consultative assembly of the Slavs. The Swiss had the Landsgemeinde. These consultative assemblies varied in power, and they had a varying relation to the legislative, execution, and judicial functions.
But it would be rare in the Great Books, even up until today, to find a full-throated defense of the right of the people to participate in their own governance. That's one reason that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution and the Federalist papers are so striking: at least in their rhetoric, they give more than lip service to the idea of democracy. Although the founders were, to varying degrees, worried about populism and mob rule, they were also worried about aristocratic and kingly rule. They recognized that all forms of government had limitations.
A lot of these democratic ideals--universal equality, universal suffrage, women's liberation, etc--have much less intellectual foundation than you would expect. When you look at the popular Enlightenment thinkers (at least the ones we read today), they tend to be much, much less radical than the Jacobins who took control in the French Revolution. They had mystical, proto-nationalist views about the power of the people inhering in an enlightened monarch, who would represent the people as a whole.
When you look at peasant revolts, too, like the infamous revolt of Wat Tyler in 1381, where a rogue cleric had the catchphrase "when Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?", that wasn't some philosopher who gave them that idea. They didn't read it in a book. That's an idea that is just constantly simmering amongst the people: we are as good as they are.
Christianity's power is that it embodies this idea. If you want to look for some intellectual underpinning for democracy, or if you want to look at a truly non-aristocratic document, the most influential of all time must be the New Testament, with its rejection of elite rule, aristocracy, and oligarchy. And that impulse formed a powerful underground strain in Christianity. It went by many names, Gnosticism, Sethianism, Paulicianism, Catharism, but it's essentially the idea that there are two Gods, a lesser one, who is the God of the Old Testament, who is evil and vengeful and is the God of the Lords, who they use to oppress you, and the more powerful one, the God of the New Testament, who has pierced the evil God's veil and is giving us the knowledge we need to perfect ourselves. This belief was always suppressed by those in authority, and yet it remained extremely potent for fifteen hundred years--to an almost comical degree. In fact, during the height of Catharism in France, there would be entire villages that were Cathar and none of the aristocracy would have any idea!
We could go on and on with the list of democratic heresies and democratic take-overs. We have a stereotype of China as being the land of "oriental despots", where the network of irrigation channels and river systems gave natural authority to powerful centralized state bureacracies. But going back two thousand years, there are immensely popular peasant revolts--the Red Eyebrows, the Yellow Turbans, the Red Turbans, etc.
And they all have the same thing in common: they've left remarkably little imprint on the written record (and, in particular, upon secular political philosophy). Indeed, their influence is largely seen through the pressures they've put on philosophers, who've been forced to formulate defenses of aristocratic rule.
So what's the lesson here? Are the Great Books tainted by their association with aristocracy?
In my opinion, they're not. First, we love them primarily because they are the outcome of an aristocratic selection process. As literary documents, these books are the best. There are probably contemporary books that are equally powerful, but they're lost amidst the murk of equality. The Great Books orient us towards greatness--that which makes some things better than other things. Secondly, our own times are so profoundly democratic, in our ethos and our philosophy, that it's nice to have a countervailing opinion. Because, as we've seen, popular ideas aren't necessarily great ideas. For thousands of years, rural farmers might have wondered, what would happen if one of our revolts actually succeeded? Well, having seen the results in several Communist countries, we now know it's not necessarily better than the sort of cooperation between the classes extolled by the classical philosophers.
Mostly I wrote this post because I've been writing some historical(ish) fiction lately, writing pastiches of various classical texts. Most of my stories I'm submitting to sci-fi or literary journals, but a few of them are too niche to get much play. One of the pieces I wrote was an account of one of the jurors who voted to convict Socrates.
This most famous trial, the foundation of all Western philosophy, didn't come about because Socrates stung Athenian society too brutally with his terrible truths. They didn't give a shit about some dude mouthing off. It happened because Socrates supported rule by the few over the many, and he was influential with the youth of Athens, and Athens was just coming out of a period of oligarchic rule (by the Spartan puppets known as the Thirty) and several of the Thirty had been Socrates's students, and the people of Athens were looking to put curbs on the tendency towards despotism. So my story follows. Feel free to skip. I did absolutely no research in writing this, so if there are any inaccuracies, just put them down to the general confusion that comes from communicating across 2500 years.
Death of a Troublemaker
You asked for an account of the workings of Athenian democracy, and you’re in luck. Most years I do not submit myself for jury service, as I'm somewhat hard of hearing and have difficulty following the arguments from a distance and have no desire to push and shout in my old age. But with the restoration of our privileges I was incited by several friends to make sure that the people were well-represented in this year, so I presented myself and was selected as one of our city’s dikasts. The pay is paltry—it hardly covers the loss of labor on my own fields—but I pocket the pay proudly as is my right, despite the sneering of the aristoi.
Several days ago I attended the trial of a controversial sophist. This man was poor and not particularly well-liked, even by the aristoi, but he had the friendship of a number of youth, who enjoyed his wit and controversial manner of speech.
You know I'm not very familiar with sophistic learning—they rarely come to our town—but I am proud of the doings of our city, and of our brave attempt to fight Spartan tyranny, and I have heard much of how these sophists heap praise on the men of Sparta and denigrate the demes of Athens, and this man in particular was renowned as the tutor of would-be tyrants. In Athens, as in all cities, there are men who believe they know better than the people how to rule. They claim at times to be seizing power for their own benefit, but ultimately they always rule for their own benefit--an insight that should be obvious even to a dimwit. This man, Socrates, they say is rather intelligent, so I've no doubt he doesn't believe his own claptrap.
Nonetheless, he constructs ingenious arguments regarding the rareness of wisdom, the evilness of the ordinary man, and the desirability of putting supreme power into the hands of so-called philosophers. This of course is an old trick of the aristoi--using their learning to create arguments that increase their own power--and the demes have become very wise to this nonsense. But this man's innovation was in lauding and building up the youth and tearing down their fathers, so that his students--most of them young aristocrats--became convinced that they and they alone possessed the wisdom to rule. This of course did not please their fathers, who have long grumbled of his influence--there was an amusing portrait of Socrates by the comedian Aristophanes, in his play at the City Dionysius. As I recall it had us all roaring, but the aristoi felt it was airing their dirty laundry, and they of course failed to give Aristophanes his due honors for his achievement.
Regardless, the aristoi have no control any longer of their youth--they are unlike we demes and do not discipline them with hard work and martial service--my own Xenocles has sent word from the Pontic colony that he is prospering, and I have considered, given the sorry state of Athens, going to live with him in my final years. Thus, the aristoi were utterly unable to control what ideas entered the minds of their youth. Can you imagine Xenocles attending such lectures? Can you imagine him coming back and saying that I, his father, who fought on the ships at Salamis, did not have the wisdom to manage my own affairs? I would have thrashed him to within an inch of his life!
But the aristoi were unable to control this man, and their youth became wild with these ideas. And then some of the richer of the demes also began running with that set—they are angry, you know, at the curtailment of our rights and the destruction of our walls. They do not put the blame where it rightfully resides, at the loss of faith in the Gods and at the loss of righteousness (Sophocles they say was a homosexual, but that is common enough amongst his class, and becoming more common amongst ours). This rabble amused itself in playing at soldier and playing at philosopher, spending all day in the agora, drinking and drawing on the public treasury that is meant for indigent men! Utterly shameful behavior, in which the young aristocrats encouraged them! Ultimately, during the ill-fated rebellion of the thirty, several of Socrates' students were found amongst the would-be tyrants.
As always, the demes were called upon to set the city to rights, just as we were called upon to rebuild its wealth after the war with Sparta was lost and, before this, after the Sicilian expedition failed. But once we took back our city, we decided to put it to rights and search out the source of the pernicious idea that the people did not deserve to rule ourselves, Socrates name repeatedly arose in the resulting discussions.
But of course under the terms of the peace treaty after we retook power, it was illegal to prosecute him for supporting the Tyrants. But a champion of the people, Meletus, came up with a work-around of which he was quite proud. Meletus brought him up on well-deserved charges of impiety (he claims to be directly channeling the wisdom of his own God, to whom nobody else speaks!) There was some grumbling over this, but is it not part of our culture to exile those citizens who become too influential? Can our city truly survive and flourish when one of the stalks grows into a mighty tree and casts shade upon the rest?
During the resulting trial, Socrates gave a gibberish and condescending speech, the up-shot of which was that he possessed more wisdom than any other man in the polis! Can you imagine? This one man of modest accomplishments, with no trade, whose work had born no fruits, and without even wealth or the holding of great office--he claimed to be superior to all the citizenry of Athens! My neighbors wanted to acquit him as he was clearly a buffoon, and it does us no credit to be a-feared of an idiot, but I argued that his buffoonery was symptom of a dangerous malaise, and that they signified a deep rot in our society. If the youth truly held good works and high office in such disrepute that they would listen to such a moron, then they would need to be reminded that in Athens at least the power of the people is paramount! In this one city on Earth, you cannot win fame and glory merely by flattering a tyrant. In this one city, alone amongst all others, you must serve the people in order to gain respect.
We voted to convict. I would have settled for banishment or ostracism, but Socrates gave a sneering speech where he pleaded for death, so we voted it, so that there would be no doubt that his sophistry had little effect on the true rulers of Athens. He had friends who would have spirited him away, but he believed until the last moment that his friends would create a revolution in his favor. Even as the hemlock touched his lips, he hoped that his supreme influence would dash the drink to the ground and perhaps crown him "philosopher king". A fool, obviously, but a sad commentary on the current state of our once-great city.
Athens also had a large enslaved population, comprising about 20 percent of its population, but the majority of Athenian citizens were not rich: a substantial number of them were rural peasantry, and agriculture in Attica was still dominated by small farmsteads rather than by Roman-style latifundia (slave plantations). Essentially every non-enslaved native Athenian man (roughly 30 percent of the adult population of Athens) could vote in the assembly and serve on juries, and service in the latter was renumerated, to allow even poorer citizens to serve.