Malcolm Schofield's new book on Plato has been published in the series Founders of Modern Political and Social Thought, in which previously published books treat Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Tocqueville, and Durkheim. Schofield has chosen to structure the book around a set of political-philosophical themes. As one would expect from the series title, the book explores its themes always with a view to their continuing interest to us not as classicists or antiquarians only but as people concerned with understanding politics in our own time.
By proceeding in this manner, Schofield runs the risk of addressing only those questions that we already have in mind and passing over others that we might become aware of for the first time through a careful reading of Plato's texts that uncovers unexpected matters. At worst, a thematic approach could become chiefly a reading into Plato of our own concerns and a finding in Plato of only what we already knew we needed. I believe that Schofield successfully avoids these potential shortcomings. He gives careful historical attention to the character of the Greek polis in general and of Athenian democracy in particular, in order to make the reader aware of how Plato's contemporary readers would understand various political terms and issues differently than we do. In other words, Schofield is fully aware of and adequately communicates specific historical qualities of Plato's world while bringing to light certain fundamental questions that we and Plato do truly share: questions about the character and role of knowledge in politics, about the articulation of rational goals and the elaboration of utopian thinking, and about ideological systems of thought.
In examining his chosen themes, Schofield takes the Republic as the centerpiece but examines in substantial detail the Laws and Statesman and brings Gorgias, Menexenus, Protagoras, Apology of Socrates, Crito, and even Euthydemus, Charmides, Critias, and others into the discussion. Every choice, to be sure, has its advantages and disadvantages. Schofield's thematic approach has the advantages of broad coverage of Plato's thinking on politics, as well as the helpful presentation of a wide range of contemporary scholarly debate on the Platonic themes with which it deals. On the other hand, it necessarily foregoes the special kinds of discoveries that can emerge from the thorough and deep interpretation of a whole dialogue of Plato (while, however, alerting us to many such studies).
Schofield is deeply concerned with the Platonic exploration of the relation of philosophy and politics and takes a particular interest in democracy. He raises thought-provoking arguments about Socrates' relationship to the Athenian democracy, suggesting especially on the basis of the Crito that Socrates experienced a certain embedded commitment to Athens. He notes ways in which the rulers in The Republic will be imbued with similar commitment to their regime. This commitment is shaped in the first instance through belief in the myth of the Noble Lie; later, as philosophers, these rulers would understand the falseness of that tale, but the habits of public devotion and service acquired and exercised from an early age would keep that commitment alive in them. The philosophers of the best city will be persuaded of their debt of gratitude to the city by stronger arguments than those that Socrates imagines the laws of Athens presenting to him.
Both Republic and Statesman develop deep reflections on the relation of politics and knowledge. Schofield explores the difference between the two. In the Republic the philosophers deserve to rule precisely because they are detached from politics, have a better life than that of a ruler, and are concerned, above all, with knowledge that transcends politics. By contrast, the Eleatic Visitor seeks to elaborate what genuine scientific knowledge of ruling would be, analogous to other technical bodies of knowledge; the question of the motive to rule is not at issue there.
Many have discussed the question of the status of Socrates' proposals for the best city in the Republic. Karl Popper considered the work a map for illiberal, indeed totalitarian, tyranny. Leo Strauss argued that Socrates indicates clearly enough the practical impossibility of the institutions proposed and suggested that the book teaches moderation of excessive hopes from politics. Schofield accepts neither Popper nor Strauss, but seeks to convey an appreciation of utopian thinking as articulating the ideal we need or choose to live by. I am not sure that the problems of possibility in practice can be thus finessed. Can one reasonably avoid evaluating ideals, at least in part, in relation to their practical possibility?
Schofield rejects the view that the Republic is a comic fantasy. But surely it does have some comic features. Socrates draws attention to the matter of comedy in a quiet but unmistakable way. After he has described poetic imitation, Adeimantus understands that “that's the way it is with tragedies.” Yes, Socrates replies, one kind of poetry “proceeds wholly by imitation—as you say, tragedy and comedy” (3.394b). Socrates, unlike Adeimantus, is aware of something comic about their discussion. In contrast, the Laws partakes more of the tragic. The Athenian Visitor answers the inquiry of tragic poets as to whether they should come to the new city: “We ourselves are poets, who have to the best of our ability created a tragedy that is the most beautiful and the best; at any rate, our whole political regime is constructed as the imitation of the most beautiful and best way of life, which we at least assert to be really the truest tragedy” (7.817b). Political life viewed simply within its own horizon is tragic; viewed from the standpoint of philosophy, it is at least partly comic.
Leo Strauss argued forty or fifty years ago that the would-be scientific study of politics had grave shortcomings, notable among them procedures that rested on inadequately examined atheistic presuppositions. In consequence, he wrote, “it is hardly necessary to add that the dogmatic exclusion of religious awareness proper renders questionable all long-range predictions concerning the future of societies” (epilogue to Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, edited by Herbert Storing, Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1962). Schofield's last chapter, “Ideology,” deals with ideology, religion, and laws; it examines both the Noble Lie in detail (and with a far-ranging inquiry into all its ramifications) in the Republic and the overall rational, theocratic character of the Laws. I have some reservations about Schofield's grouping ideology and religion together without investigating the possibly necessary distinctions to be made between them; nonetheless, this last chapter captures some very important and thought-provoking differences between these two most extensive Platonic political investigations and explores a fundamental political issue with a clarity and depth rare in contemporary political analysis.
Schofield's concluding paragraph is worth quoting from at some length:
There is nothing much here [in the Laws] which political liberals of any persuasion will find congenial. Yet liberalism has arguably failed to provide from its own resources a convincing explanation of what it is that makes a society cohesive. In most places at most times … it is religion that has played a key ideological role in cementing societies together. Conceivably the relative social calm enjoyed by materialistic Western democracies in the post-Christian era of the last half of the twentieth century was the aberration. Certainly religion has once again become a major ingredient in the life of some nation states—and in their global interactions—in a way that would have seemed inconceivable forty or fifty years ago. So Plato's concern that the religion shaping the life of a society should be rational religion may be something that social and political theorists need to take seriously again. (325–26)
Intelligent in its choice of themes in Plato's treatments of politics, fair-minded and even generous in its treatment of competing interpretations and arguments, broad in its references to contemporary scholarship and debates on Plato, this book is well worth the reading, for students of Plato and politics at almost any level of involvement.
