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Democracy and Judgment in Ancient Greek Political Thought

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Democracy and Judgment in Ancient Greek Political Thought DEMOCRACY AND JUDGMENT IN ANCIENT GREEK POLITICAL THOUGHT Joshua Preston Miller A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science. Chapel Hill 2017 Approved by: Susan Bickford Stephen Leonard Michael Lienesch C.D.C. Reeve Jeff Spinner-Halev ©2017 Joshua Preston Miller ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Joshua Preston Miller: Democracy and Judgment in Ancient Greek Political Thought (Under the Direction of Susan Bickford) This dissertation examines practical and ethical dimensions of democratic political judgment in the works of Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle. Despite their philosophical and methodological differences, each of these thinkers raised similar doubts about the wisdom of fifth- and fourth-century Athenian decision-making. Arguing that Athenian policy debates tended to privilege short-term gains over longer-term interests, they suggested that moral reflection might guide political judgments toward more ethically sustainable ends. By showing how Greek political philosophy developed in response to real-world political problems, I demonstrate a dialectical relationship between theory and practice that is often overlooked in the scholarship surrounding these figures. This project also contributes to ongoing debates that depict political judgment as a practice open to radically democratic debate, on one hand, or reserved for the rarified talents of experts, on the other. In my view, sound political judgment emerges from careful considerations that all citizens are capable of, provided they commit themselves to engaging in continuous reflection. iii For Mom, Dad, and Katie iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Though written over long stretches of solitude, this dissertation took shape in public through years of seminars, reading groups, conferences, and conversations. I have a lot to be thankful for. I would first like to thank my dissertation committee. Susan Bickford has supervised this work along with most of my intellectual development for the last seven years. She inspired me to tackle big questions, afforded me the time to reflect on them, and held my answers to high standards. If I can call myself a scholar, it is because of her. Mike Lienesch’s notes and questions about the dissertation’s final draft have given it a life beyond this stage of my career. Meeting with him is as close as I will ever come to sitting with Socrates. Seminars and discussions with Jeff Spinner-Halev and Steve Leonard turned this project from its narrow focus on the Greeks toward broader ambitions. Jeff’s concern with modern relevance and Steve’s attention to method will forever shape how I study the history of political thought. As he might recall, this dissertation was born from a poorly written essay in C.D.C. Reeve’s seminar on Plato. David nurtured my work with sharp wit and generous feedback. Correcting everything from my Greek to my reading of Pericles, he improved this project in every way. I am proud to call him a friend. Early funding from a Thomas M. Uhlman Research Fellowship and additional support from an Ayer Family Travel Award helped me test ideas from each chapter at national conferences. Drafts of the first and third chapters were presented at the Association for Political Theory annual meetings in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Drafts of the second and fourth chapters each received valuable feedback at the American Political Science Association’s annual v meetings 2012 and 2016, respectively. I would like to thank my discussants and the attendees at each conference for their lively questions and helpful suggestions. Informal exchanges about the Greeks with Amanda Barnes-Cook, Liz Markovits and Matt Weidenfeld were deeply valuable often my most enjoyable. I would also like to thank my students at UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Wilmington, UNC Charlotte, and Elon University. They didn’t know it at the time, but their thoughts on Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia and Plato’s metaphysics buoyed my spirits and kept me laughing long enough to finish some especially tough sections. Most importantly, I would like to acknowledge the deep emotional and intellectual support I received from my family while writing this dissertation. Gary, Angela and Tyler Turner welcomed me into their family just as I was starting this project. In equal measure, their hard work and joie de vivre reminded me daily to appreciate the important things in life and to strive for them. Thanks, too, for the beer. My parents, Paula and Julian Miller, deserve higher praises than I can sing. Our winding conversations, covering everything from the politics of higher education to anyone-but-Hamilton’s chances for an F1 title, pulled me from my desk long enough to remember who I was. More importantly, they taught me that ethical values emerge from ceaseless reflection rather than from implicit faith in shallow dogmas. This dissertation is, above all, my best effort to follow their example. My wife, Katie Turner, deserves her own paragraph. If I am right to argue that good judgment requires critical understanding and cultivated foresight, Katie is the best judge I know. The only person to read every chapter at least twice, she often saw my arguments more clearly than I and offered invaluable suggestions for articulating them. Indeed, this project would be twice as long and half as good without her incisive mind and patient help. She is the philosopher- midwife I don’t deserve but am most deeply grateful for. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...9 References………………………………………………………………………………..23 CHAPTER 1: HATING FRIENDS AND LOVING ENEMIES………………………………...25 1.1 The Periclean Paradigm……………………………………………………………...40 1.2 Justice versus Interests: The Mytilenean Debate ……………………………………56 1.3 Tyrannical Calculus: The Sicilian Expedition……………………………………….68 1.4 Brasidas’ Better Judgment…………………………………………………………...80 1.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...92 References………………………………………………………………………………..94 CHAPTER 2: THE MIDWIFE ON TRIAL……………………………………………………102 2.1 Plato’s Critique of Athenian Judgment in the Apology………………………………...110 2.2 Epistemology and Judgment in the Theaetetus………………………………………….126 2.3 Hedonism and the Measure of Judgment in the Protagoras………………………...151 2.4 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….169 References………………………………………………………………………………172 CHAPTER 3. JUSTICE, EXPERIENCE, AND JUDGMENT IN PLATO’S REPUBLIC….....181 3.1 Political and Philosophical Context………………………………………………...185 3.2 Alternative Justice, Alternative Judgment………………………………………….214 3.3 Platonic Political Judgment…………………………………………………………245 3.4 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….255 vii References………………………………………………………………………………257 CHAPTER 4. THE WISDOM OF A CERTAIN MULTITUDE………………………………263 4.1 Democracy and the Demagogic Challenge…………………………………………272 4.2 Practical Wisdom in Nicomachean Ethics VI………………………………………285 4.3 The Wisdom of a Certain Multitude………………………………………………..294 4.4 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….302 References………………………………………………………………………………304 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………310 References………………………………………………………………………………314 viii INTRODUCTION On October 8, 2016, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump met for a town hall-style debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Days earlier, an audio recording from 2005 was released in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women. Eager to deflect attention from his comments, Trump attacked his opponent’s foreign policy judgment. “Yes, I’m very embarrassed by it,” he replied when asked about the tape, “But it’s locker room talk, and it’s one of those things. [But] I will knock the hell out of ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria]. We’re going to defeat ISIS. ISIS happened a number of years ago in a vacuum that was left because of bad judgment.” He later expanded on this charge, “[Clinton] has made bad judgments not only on taxes, she’s made bad judgments on Libya, on Syria, on Iraq.” Trump was not the first to criticize the former Secretary of State on these terms. In April, Senator Bernie Sanders questioned Clinton’s judgment during a bruising primary campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. “In many respects, she may have the experience to be president of the United States,” he conceded during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. “But,” he continued, “in terms of her judgment, something is clearly lacking.” Questioning a political rival’s judgment strikes to the heart of a quality that most people think their leaders should have. In a series of public opinion polls taken between 1995 and 2003, the Pew Research Center found that voters ranked sound judgment as the most important quality a presidential hopeful should possess, followed closely by high ethical standards.1 Attacking an 1 Pew Research Center (2003: 12). 9 opponent’s judgment has the added benefit of vagueness. What do voters mean when they praise a leader’s sound judgment? Is sound judgment equivalent to effective decision-making? If so, effective to what end? Moreover, what relevant features distinguish good judgment from bad? In many respects, these questions are difficult to answer because judgment is so pervasive. As Albert Camus succinctly put it in The Rebel, “To breathe is to judge.”2 A life devoid of choices was, for him, unimaginable. Ronald Beiner makes a similar observation in his groundbreaking work, Political Judgment. “We are constantly forming judgments,” he writes,
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