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Plato's View of Tyranny Antonis Coumoundouros Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2006 Plato's View of Tyranny Antonis Coumoundouros Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Coumoundouros, A. (2006). Plato's View of Tyranny (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/435 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PLATO’S VIEW OF TYRANNY A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Philosophy Department McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Antonis Coumoundouros (03/03/2006) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful for the opportunity to thank those who have made this dissertation possible. Ron Polansky deserves special thanks for following me through every stage of this process with great rigor and insight. His energy and endless curiosity are invaluable. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Therese Bonin and James Swindal for their support and the great care with which they took in reading this dissertation. In addition I would like to thank my colleagues and friends in the graduate school for the many conversations, insights and suggestions, and particularly Patrick Macfarlane for his enthusiasm, encouragement and sobering advice. Moreover, I would like to thank Sandrinos and Aliki for their unconditional love and support. Finally and most of all I would like to thank Tara Beth for making my life better and more meaningful and for motivating me every day. Coumoundouros––Plato’s View of Tyranny ii Table of Contents Introduction 1-8 Chapter 1: The Terminology for Tyranny Before and During Plato’s Time 9-70 1.1 Why and How to Examine the Terminology for Tyranny 10-15 1.2 Tyranny and Athenian Self-perception 15-20 1.3 The First Occurrences of the Terms: Archilochus 20-23 1.4 Herodotus’ Histories 23-32 1.5 Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War 32-42 1.6 The Tragic Poets and Aristophanes 43-53 1.7 Athenian Orators of the Fifth and Fourth Century 53-59 1.8 Isocrates 59-69 1.9 Concluding Remarks 69-70 Chapter 2: Plato’s Preliminary Account of Tyranny in Republic I and II 71-96 2.1 Republic I: Thrasymachus’ Position on Justice and Tyranny 71-89 2.2 Republic II: Glaucon and Adeimantus’ Challenge and Further Description of Tyranny 89-96 Chapter 3: The General Argument of Republic VIII 97-117 3.1 The Role of the Account of Deviant Regimes in the Main Ethical Argument: Instrumentality and Incompleteness 98-103 3.2 The Logical and Empirical Perspectives of the Account of Deviant Regimes 103-105 3.3 The Analogy of the City and the Soul 105-110 3.4 Plato’s Depiction of Regime Change 110-115 3.5 The Incompleteness of the Account of Regimes 115-117 Chapter 4: The Origins of Tyranny: Democracy and the Potential Tyrant in Republic VIII 118-149 4.1 The Place of Tyranny in the General Order of Deviant Regimes 119-122 4.2 The Implications of License or Excessive Democratic Freedom 122-131 4.3 From Freedom to Slavery: The Principle of Excess 131-137 4.4 The Rise of the Tyrant 138-149 Chapter 5: Tyranny in Power 150-186 5.1 Appearing Just and Beneficent 152-163 5.2 Going to War 163-166 5.3 Suspicion and Elimination of Citizens as Enemies, the Need for Bodyguards, and the Lack of Friends 167-175 5.4 Tyranny and Poetry: Propaganda and Ideology 175-181 5.5 Tyranny’s Resources, the Tyrant as Parricide, and Tyranny as Slavery 181-184 5.6 Tyranny and Necessity 185-186 Coumoundouros––Plato’s View of Tyranny iii Chapter 6: The Tyrant’s Psychology 187-220 6.1 The Tyrant and the Tyrannical Man 187-189 6.2 Necessary, Unnecessary, and Unnecessary and Lawless Desires 189-201 6.3 The Origin of the Tyrannical Man and the Compulsory Grip of Eros 201-208 6.4 The Tyrannical Person’s Life: Desires and Deeds 209-213 6.5 How the Tyrannical Man May Become a Tyrant 213-217 6.6 The Tyrant’s Psychology and Necessity 217-220 Chapter 7: Plato’s Arguments Against Tyranny 221-243 7.1 Thrasymachus’ Challenge 221-222 7.2 Socrates’ Emphasis on a Comprehensive perspective and the Different Levels of Argument 222-225 7.3 Two Arguments Against Tyranny: Tyranny as a Self-Defeating Regime and Tyranny as a Bad Regime for Citizens 225-228 7.4 The Impotence and Wretchedness of Tyrannical Life 229-241 7.5 Necessity and Wretchedness in Tyrannical Life 241-243 Conclusion 244-253 Bibliography 254-263 Coumoundouros––Plato’s View of Tyranny iv Introduction. The aim of this dissertation is to highlight the timeless insights and enduring relevance of Plato’s view of tyranny. I examine Plato’s comprehensive account of tyranny and the tyrant in the Republic, and in so doing I contribute to our understanding of: (1) Plato’s view of tyranny and the tyrant, (2) the perennial political problem of tyranny in terms of its origins, goals, function, and measures it employs, (3) the tyrant as a political figure with particular desires related to his goals, actions, and measures as a ruler, and, thus (4) the relation between tyranny as a regime and the tyrant as a type of person. Let us begin by considering why tyranny is an intriguing topic in general and why Plato’s view of tyranny in particular deserves our attention. Despite the millennia that have passed since Plato’s time, it is evident that tyrannies still exist, that they still puzzle us, and that they still present us with problems. A look around the globe makes us realize that there are numerous governments in the countries of the former Soviet Union, the Americas, Africa, and Asia that we can readily call tyrannies. Contemporary or recent tyrants such as Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, Mao, Hitler, and Stalin, or as old as Peisitratus, Dionysius II of Syracuse, Julius Caesar, and Louis XIV, have left considerable and controversial marks in history, and have not ceased to invite our curiosity. In our own time, especially since 9/11, there has been a considerable amount of discussion concerning tyranny, terrorism, freedom, and democracy. Some wonder whether terrorism and tyranny are related, and others claim that they are fundamentally related. Others, still, wonder whether democracies can come to replace tyrannies and how this may happen. Moreover, the Nazi horrors of World War II and those of Stalinist Coumoundouros––Plato’s View of Tyranny 1 Russia in the twentieth century became an incentive for various thinkers to investigate such political systems and to reawaken discussions on freedom, justice, and tyranny. Plato’s personal and controversial entanglements with tyrants brought him close to the phenomenon of tyranny and might partially explain why he was astonished by it. Plato lived in an Athens which remembered the tyranny of the Peisistratids, and which had recently lived through the tyranny of the Thirty. Plato tells us quite a bit about his experience with the Thirty in the Seventh Letter. He tells us that the previous Athenian democracy, engaged in the Peloponnesian war, seemed a great regime compared to the tyranny, “they showed [the Thirty tyrants] in a short time that the preceding constitution had been a precious thing” (324d-e). We know that Plato’s relatives, Charmides and Critias, were members of the Thirty, rich anti-democrats established by the Spartan king in 404. In fact, Critias was the head of the Thirty, which makes him a sort of tyrant of tyrants. Both Critias and Charmides were killed in 403 in the fighting that overthrew them and re-established the democracy. Plato’s involvement with the famous tyrant Dionysius II of Syracuse has fascinated and puzzled scholars since antiquity. In the Seventh Letter, we may find his attempts and failure to educate Dionysius and to turn him into a philosopher king in the manner described in the Republic. Whether this interpretation is correct or not, it still invites questions regarding the extent of Plato’s involvement with politics and the particular tyrant. Dionysius looks very much like the tyrant described in the Republic and thus we get a rather close and curious correlation between Plato’s work and his own life. Coumoundouros––Plato’s View of Tyranny 2 Plato’s founding of the Academy shows that he was deeply concerned with the polis and its fate. His experience with tyranny seems to have motivated him to begin a school where he sought to improve some citizens by philosophic education, and generally to enhance the level of culture of his time. The Academy was a school that existed in competition with other schools, such as Isocrates’ school of rhetoric. We also know that several members of the Academy were involved in politics which makes us suspect that political education was part of the program in the Academy. Now let us turn to tyranny as Plato discusses it in the dialogues. Following the 4th century, tyranny was a substantial problem for Plato and other intellectuals such as Thucydides, Xenophon, and Aristotle. Plato’s writings reveal to us that he was deeply concerned with it and that he sought to explain it. Plato shows this concern with his inclusion of his relatives as characters in his dialogues (see the Charmides).
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