46

PLATO, HEGEL AND SUBJECTIVISM

Robert W. Hall University of Vermont

What is not usually recognized is the degree to which Plato anticipates the subjective aspect of Hegel's notion of Sittlichkeit.

Something very much like Hegel's view of the subjective side of

Sittlichkeit is discernible in Plato's political writings, especially in the Republic and the Laws.

What keeps Hegel from seeing this side of Plato's political and social thought is his belief that Plato is a creature of his time and that he can not transcend it. For Hegel Plato was disturbed by the irruption into the political scene of subjectivity especially as it appeared in Sophocles and in the Socrates of the Platonic dialogues.

In Hegel's interpretation Plato was attempting to staunch the flow of subjectivism. that threatened the status of the polis as the locus and standard of the right.' Both Antigone's appeal to the gods as the basis of the right and Socrates' reliance on his daemon or inner voice subverted in Plato's eyes, Hegel believed, the authority and sanctity of the law and authority of the polis.

Subjectivity in the Republic

To my knowledge, only Gray has suggested that in coming to his conclusion about Plato's supposed suppression of subjectivity, Hegel largely ignored Plato's later dialogues, especially the Laws which present "radical differences from the point of view of the Republic, particularly in the matter of private, subjective freedom. ,,2 Gray has a valid point in bringing out the subjective freedom of the Laws, but, unfortunately, along with many others including Hegel, he accepts the traditional interpretation of the Republic that Plato does suppress the subjectivity of the members of the ideal polis by making the polis the

"substantial, the universal" as the end of the individual. For Hegel the "essential" character of the Republic is "the suppression of 47 individuality" (HP 11113). Of course Plato does not share Mill's view of the individual who can express himself, his individuality in any fashion that respects the legal rights of others. But I shall try to show that not only in the Laws, but also in the Republic, Plato has a theory of the individual and the individual's relation to the polis which together constitute something like Sittlichkeit.

According to Hegel, in the Republic

The principle of the self-subsistent inherently sUbjective

freedom, is denied its right in the purely substantial form

which Plato gave to mind in its actuality. This principle

dawned in an inward form in the Christian religion ....

(PR 185R)

In his focus on the ideal polis as a bulwark against the eruption of subjectivity in the Greek world, Hegel overlooks the fundamental purpose of the discussion of the ideal polis, the quest for a definition of the justice of the individual, of the person. At the behest of the half brothers of Plato, Glaucon and Adeimantus, Socrates undertakes an inquiry into the inherent or intrinsic value of justice for the individual apart from any external consequences whether such justice is observed by gods or men. He is to show how justice of the person is inherently worthwhile, even though the just person is thought by all to be wickedly unjust and suffers imprisonment and a horrible death.

Do not merely show us by argument that justice is superior

to injustice, but make clear to us what each in and of

itself does to its possessor, whereby the one is evil and

the other good. (369C)

While Hegel acknowledges that for Plato the individual has three aspects of the soul that achieve justice and the other virtues of the individual analogous to the justice and other virtues of the ideal