Democracy, Equality, and Eid6

American Political Science Review Vol. 92, No. 2 June 1998 Democracy, Equality,and Eid6: A RadicalView from Book 8 of Plato'sRepublic ARLENE W. SAXONHOUSE University of Michigan A Plato opposed to democracy fills the literature, and while some scholars question whether Plato adequately captures Socrates' possibly favorable views of democracy, Plato himself remains a paragon of elitism. I argue that Plato's response to democracy is far more theoreticallyinteresting than simple disdain for the unenlightened masses. Rather, in Book 8 of the Republic he explores the fundamental tensions of a regime identified with freedom and equality, which he presents as characterized by formlessness, and the epistemological and theoreticalproblems posed by the absence of forms (eide). Eide give structure and identity to regimes and to their citizens; they are necessary for intellection and philosophy, but they are also the grounds for compulsion. Plato's analysis of democracy thus becomes a more serious challenge for democratic theorists than previously recognized. A n elitist Plato, opposed to democracy and hostile vision,2 I attend to the opposition between democ- to the masses, fills the literature. In the midst of racy and that theory to illustrate how Socrates' an extensive philological and grammatical com- discussion in Book 8 of the Republic points to mentary on Plato's Republic, James Adam (1902, 2.24, democracy's dependence on a "formlessness" that ad loc. 494a) includes the following brief but telling challenges claims of equality and of identity within observation: "The theory of Ideas is not a democratic democratic regimes. philosophy." He writes this in response to an inter- The epistemological critique of democracy that de- change between Socrates and Adeimantus concerning rives from the theory of the forms points to very the access of the many to the idea or form of the Good, different challenges than those that motivated the during which Socrates claims: "It is impossible for the judgment by Adam and others that the theory of the multitude to be philosophic." Only a few will have forms is not a democratic philosophy. For them, a access to the forms (eidO).1A profound inequality of hierarchy of intellectual skills justifies a hierarchy of rule and authority seems to follow from that unequal political rule, and since the highest level of intellectual skill access. I could begin with Adam's assertion that the is required for an apprehension of the forms, a regime that distributes power equally to those who can theory of ideas is not a democratic philosophy, but ascend and those who cannot must fail. The parable of the basis for my argument derives from a very the boat from the beginning of Book 6, for example, different perspective, an epistemological one that captures this argument vividly. There, the somewhat has nothing to do with the capabilities, or lack deaf shipowner of limited vision who knows little about thereof, of the many to attain a vision of the Good. seafaring allows himself to be drugged by the quarrel- Rather, I focus on the theory of the forms as a some sailors. Though they never learned the skill of mechanism for categorization, opposing epistemo- navigation, they are eager to control the ship. Mean- logically, politically, ahd psychologically the open- while, the true pilot is scorned as a useless "gazer at the ness of democracy. While Adam and numerous heavens" (488a-489e). The discussion of democracy in others see elitism in the Platonic theory of the forms Book 8 does not address that issue at all. Rather, it because the many cannot ascend to a philosophic presents democracy as a regime that in its insistence on freedom and equality is a regime of formlessness, one that lacks eidW.The theory of forms insofar as it is Arlene W. Saxonhouse is Professor of Political Science, University of explicated in Book 6 is in part the basis for our capacity Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045. The original version of this paper was written while I was a Fellow to categorize-to recognize similarities and differences at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science. I so that we can distinguish one person or object from acknowledge with gratitude the support of the center's staff and of another and recognize as well what unites them. On the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which helped fund my tenure this rests the foundation of mathematics, our capacity there. Peter Euben, Jill Frank, Stephen Salkever, Jacqueline Stevens, and Judith Swanson offered helpful comments along the way. Thanks to count, to add, to subtract, and our capacity to are due as well to the anonymous reviewers for this journal. discriminate, to separate the good from the bad, the 1 EidW(sing. eidos) in the Homeric epics and later Greek literature noble from the base, the citizen from the noncitizen. often means simply that which is seen, the shape or form of something; it came also to mean "class" or "kind" of object. In the Republic and elsewhere in the Platonic corpus, the term refers to an 2 Jowett and Campbell (1894, 3.281), for example, commenting on immutable shape or form of a thing or value (e.g., Justice or the the same passage, reflect at length: "The opposition of the few and Good) that is accessible to the intellect only by abstracting from the the many is almost as great in the reading age of the nineteenth senses and sensible particulars. In Book 6 (as discussed below) the century as in the hearing age of Socrates and Plato. In politics, in form of the Good is the highest object of the philosophic soul's society, in the realms of thought and imagination, there are two search, but eidWare more general than the limited repertory of value classes ... the inferior minds and the superior: those who are under terms, such as the Good and the Beautiful. They help typologize (as the influence of the hour, and those who have character." They in Book 8) and organize our sense experiences by rising above moderate these claims a bit by noting that the opposition "is not so particulars subject to observation by the senses. entire and absolute as Plato seems to assume." 273 Democracy, Equality, and Eide in Plato's Republic June 1998 Democracy in its openness in Book 8 lacks this ment (the sharing of rule, isonomy, the assembly, the capacity for adding and for discriminating and thus lays juries) that we may associate with the institutions of out the tensions and dangers inherent in regimes democracy past and present. Democracy is instead a founded on formlessness and on principles of equality. regime of freedom and a radical equality arising from Claims of equality necessarily entail claims of inequal- the absence of eidW,the very concept that controls the ity, of who is not equal. EidWenable us to typologize, to structure of Book 8. In Socrates' elaboration, this define equal and unequal, but eidWalso can tyrannize. means that democracy, according to its fundamental The openness of democracy is the escape from that principle of freedom, is the regime that is incapable of tyranny, but at the same time it may leave us lost introducing typologies into the epistemological and without the grounds to make choices or structure the political realm. The discussion in Book 8 thus subverts world in which we live. Thus, the epistemological the book's apparent intention to give forms to re- critique of democracy in Book 8 points to the tensions gimes-as well as perhaps the philosophic explorations underlying current debates concerning "identity" poli- and claims of the previous books. A democracy true to tics and the "politics of difference." In a contemporary its principles of equality and freedom must resist the world that cares deeply about equality, the formless- tyrannizing of eide, the boundaries and limits that ness at the heart of democratic principles creates define citizenship and the relations of parts. It must profound contradictions about how to implement such resist the typologies and forms that are part of a claims. Likewise, contemporary demands that identity, Platonic philosophical order. The conflict between a self-assertion of form, be acknowledged stand in philosophy and democracy is an epistemological one, tension with the openness of democratic "formless- not only a moral one.5 ness." The freedom we and Socrates in Book 8 associ- There often is a tendency among democratic theo- ate with democratic regimes entails the rejection of rists to avoid the theoretical complexity raised by tyrannizing eidW;but we cannot function either politi- typologies, that which asserts the need to search for cally or intellectually without eidW.Socrates' examina- differences at the same time as identifying similarities; tion of democracy as a regime of formlessness helps us such endeavors may foreclose addressing the more understand the limits and contradictions of claims of tractable aspects of democratic theory. Dahl (1986, equality and identity in democratic regimes-of an 191), for example, prefaces a discussion of procedural equality that effaces the eide and of an identity that democracy: "Since their origins in classical Greece, entails the assertion of eide. democratic ideas have been plagued by the problem of Book 8 traditionally stands as the book that traces inclusion: what persons have a rightful claim to be the decline of regimes, but attention to that aspect has included as citizens with full and equal rights to led scholars to ignore the equally strong focus that participate in governing the association. My strategy Plato places on typology, on the five forms (eide) of will be to leave this problem unsolved in order to set regimes and their human counterparts.3Socrates traces out the assumptions and criteria of procedural democ- the movement from aristocracy to tyranny and the racy." Charles Beitz (1989, 5) writes a magisterial parallel personalities, how each one comes into being volume on political equality, beginning with the exhor- (the genetic analysis), but he also identifies the differ- tation: "For although nothing is to be gained by ent eidWof political regime and how we can distinguish claiming that equality is not part of the definition of one from the other (the eidetic analysis).

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