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THE TYRANT'S VICE: PLEONEXIA AND LAWLESSNESS IN PLATO'S REPUBLIC

2019; Wiley; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/phpe.12129

1758-2245

Karen Margrethe Nielsen,

Classical Antiquity Studies

Plato's portrait of the tyrant in book IX of the Republic marks the culmination of Socrates' defense of the just life. He has been challenged to explain how justice, because of its very self, benefits its possessor and how injustice harms them (367d), and why 'injustice is the worst thing a soul can have in it' and 'justice is the greatest good' (366e).1 To explain the effects of justice 'because of its very self', Socrates must determine what justice is – its 'nature and origins' – and thereby show that we always have reason to prefer the just life over the unjust, regardless of the rewards and reputations that follow from being thought to be just. Since these rewards are 'simulator accessible'2, an unjust person can enjoy them in full, if he 'creates a façade of illusory virtue' around himself and 'deceives those who come near', while keeping behind the façade 'the greedy and crafty fox of the wise Archilochus', as Adeimantus puts it (365c).3 In this way, the unjust man can reap the rewards of complete injustice while enjoying the benefits of a reputation for perfect justice. He gets the best of both worlds, and can even placate the gods with pleasant prayers and sacrifices: stories of Hades won't stay his hand and deter him from committing the 'whole of injustice' (hê holê adikia): kidnapping and enslaving the citizens and installing himself as tyrant (344b-c). The defense of the just life is cast as choice: between the life of the perfectly just man with an unearned reputation for the worst injustice, and the life of a perfectly unjust man with an undeserved reputation for perfect justice. To vindicate his claim that 'justice is the greatest good', and 'injustice the worst thing a soul can have in it', Socrates must show that the tyrant is the least happy of all in the city, although he has committed the whole of injustice and secured the maximum amount of power and wealth for himself. 'Even though his soul is really greedy for it, he's the only one in the whole city who can't travel abroad or see the sights that other free people want to see. Instead, he lives like a woman, mostly confined to his own house, and envying any other citizen who happens to travel abroad and see something worthwhile' (579b). 'A real tyrant is really a slave, compelled to engage in the worst kind of fawning, slavery, and pandering to the worst kind of people. He's so far from satisfying his desires in any way that it is clear – if one happens to know that one must study his whole soul – that he is in the greatest need of most things and truly poor. And, if indeed his state is like that of the city he rules, then, he's full of fear, convulsions, and pains throughout his life' (579d-e). 'He is inevitably envious, untrustworthy, unjust, friendless, impious, host and nurse to every kind of vice, and […] his ruling makes him even more so. And because of all these, he is extremely unfortunate and goes on to make those near him like himself' (580a). 'Womanly', 'slavish', 'fearful', 'poor': the tyrant's ambition has made him the opposite of the manly, masterly, and fearless person he wants to be. While ostensibly the envy of all his subjects – 'a true man' (hôs alêthôs anêr, 359b2) – his life is impoverished by his own injustice. In this paper, I wish to understand the moral psychology of the tyrant, whether he leads a private life, or 'some misfortune provides him with the opportunity to become an actual tyrant' (578c). Why does the tyrant not get what he wants? Why is he enslaved to his own appetites rather than completely free of restraint? How does the tyrant's 'erotic love' differ from the appetites of his subjects? When Plato says that the tyrant is 'forcibly driven by the stings of a dronish gadfly (oistros)'5, how should we understand this 'great winged drone' (hupopteron kai megan kêphêna, 573a1) and the painful sting it inflicts on the tyrant's soul? The paradoxes of tyranny are also explored in the Gorgias. Socrates here startles Polus by claiming that 'orators and tyrants have the least power in the city', and that 'they do just about nothing they want to do (ouden gar poiein hôn boulontai hôs epos eipein), though they certainly do whatever they see most fit to do (poiein mentoi hoti an autois doxêi beltiston einai)' (466d-e). Despite Polus's fawning admiration for Callicles and other powerful men, his life will be frustrated if he follows in their path.6 Polus appeals to the tyrant Archelaus to show that the unjust man is happy, provided he gets away with the 'whole of injustice', in Thrasymachus' words from Rep. I. Archelaus was the illegitimate son of the Macedonian's king's brother by his slave, and so by law himself a slave, but in defiance of his conventional status, he killed the legitimate heirs to the Macedonian throne and installed himself as ruler. It is precisely because he has committed the whole of injustice that he is now the happiest of all, claims Polus. If we believe Glaucon's argument concerning Gyges' ring (Rep. II 359c-360d), we would all want to follow Archelaus down the path of injustice if we only could.7 But because we are too weak to commit injustice with impunity, we create laws and enter into covenants that prevent us from committing injustice in exchange for protection against others' overreaching. What light can the Gorgias throw on Plato's analysis of the tyrant's wretched life in the Republic and the psychology of vice? Readers have paid insufficient attention to Plato's description of the tyrant as lawless (paranomos, Rep. VII 539a cf. IX), and have portrayed him as an extreme kind of intemperate man (akolastos), rather than as the embodiment of the worst kind of injustice. While the tyrant's vice manifests itself though his unrestrained pursuit of pleasure, it is caused by his lawless conception of the good. The tyrant does not simply lack temperance (sôphrosunê), as this virtue is described in book IV: 'unanimity between the naturally better and worse parts of the city and soul that the part with reason should rule, yielding desires that are simple, measured, and in accordance with reason and correct belief' (431b-432a). He embodies the worst kind of injustice (adikia), and so he suffers the worst kind of psychological disorder. Vice for Plato is a character trait that comes in multiple varieties, each kind representing a falling away from the harmonious ordering that characterizes the just man and the just state. This corruption – which culminates in tyranny – has internal psychological causes, as well as external social enabling conditions, in the form of household and state dysfunction. The tyrant's vice is the ultimate expression of human nature unchecked by law, whether in its external manifestation in the constitution, or its internal manifestations in the soul.8 These psychological tendencies exist independently of the political circumstances that allow the tyrannical man to ascend to power as a self-appointed champion of the poor. Indeed, Plato maintains that lawless desires are not restricted to tyrants: they are present in everyone. At the start of book IX, Plato observes that 'some of our unnecessary pleasures and desires are lawless (tôn mê anankaiôn hêdonôn te kai epithumiôn dokousi tines moi einai paranomoi)' (571b4-5). He acknowledges that 'they are probably present in everyone, but they are held in check by the laws and the better desires in alliance with reason' (571b5-7). In a few, godlike people, lawless desires have been eliminated entirely (b7-9), while in others, only a few weak ones remain. The former are presumably the incorruptible people that Glaucon has in mind in book II, when he qualifies his earlier claim that no one is willingly just 'apart from someone of a godlike character who is disgusted by injustice or one who has gained knowledge and avoids injustice for that reason' (366c). But such people are few and far between: they are either divine or philosopher kings. And so most people – even the best – will have some lawless desires latent in their souls. These desires are awakened in sleep, when the rest of the soul – the rational, gentle, and ruling part – slumbers. Then the 'beastly and savage part, full of food and drink, casts off sleep, and seeks to find a way to gratify itself'. At such a time, 'there is nothing that it dares not do – free of all control by shame or reason' (571c). The appetitive part doesn't shrink from having sex with anyone, whether man, god, or beast – or even a mother. It is wholly without restraint, both in the object of its pursuit and in its choice of means. 'When the other desires – filled with incense, myrrh, wreaths, wine, and the other pleasures found in their company – buzz about (bombousai) the drone (kêphên) [the leader of the soul], nurturing it and making it grow as large as possible, they plant the seed of longing in it. Then this leader of the soul (ho prostatês tês psuchês) adopts madness as its bodyguard and becomes frenzied. If it finds any beliefs or desires in the man that are thought to be good or that still have some shame, it destroys them and throws them out, until it's purged him of moderation (heôs an kathêrêi sôphrosunês) and filled him with imported madness (mania)' (Rep. IX 573a-b) The drone is a 'leader of the soul' – it is put in position of ruler by the swarm of appetites and in turn whips the appetites up into a frenzy, much as a leader of a democratic mob stirs the crowd into action. The use of 'prostatês' suggests that the drone represents the leading part of the soul – reason – when it adopts indiscriminate and maximal satisfaction of appetitive desires as its principle. Any desire and any belief that opposes the supremacy of this principle is destroyed and expelled. In the absence of any true belief, madness, in the sense of the deepest illusion about the good – protects the rule of the drone. Once the traditional opinions that he has held from childhood about what is fine or shameful have been purged from the tyrant's soul, the lawless desires in the appetitive part are free to seek enjoyment indiscriminately. The tyrannical son uses deceit and force to acquire wealth from any source, lest he suffer greatly from the pain of unfilled cravings. Observing the young tyrant, Plato notes that 'just as the pleasures that are latecomers outdo (pleon eichon) the older ones and steal away their satisfactions, won't the man himself think that he deserves to outdo (pleon eichein) his father and mother, even though he is younger than they are – to take and spend his father's wealth when he has spent his own share?' (Rep IX 574a). If they won't give it to him, he will steal it by deceitful means, and if that doesn't work, he will seize it by force. How do these 'lawless' desires relate to what Glaucon in book II posited as the basic inclination of mankind, namely pleonexia? In book II, Glaucon, playing devil's advocate, sought to prove that no one does justice willingly, but only because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity. Justice is like bad tasting medicine: we only obey the law because we lack the power to do injustice without paying the penalty. 'The desire to outdo others and get more and more (pleonexia). That's what everyone's nature naturally pursues as good, but nature is forced by law into the perversion of treating fairness with respect' (Rep. II 359c) Pleonexia is not simply greed, if by 'greed' we mean acquisitiveness. It is a kind of greed that does not just want to maximize the good for itself, but to do so at others' expense, in defiance of fairness. It thus arises in matter of distribution, where proportionate equality is at stake. That is why 'the desire to outdo others and get more and more' is an apt explication of the Greek term. The thought that the desire to get more and more and to outdo others is fundamental to human psychology may seem to paint a bleak picture of humanity. On this conception, a man is by nature a wolf to another man (homo homini lupus est). It is a conception that is rooted in Greek notion of justice as 'benefiting one's friends and harming one's enemies' (Rep I 332a) with the only exception being that to the pleonectic man, there are no true friends, only real or potential enemies. If this is right, we are by nature not just greedy, but competitive. We don't just want to 'get more and more', but we also want to outdo others. That is, we desire have more than our fair share of divisible benefits while shirking our fair share of burdens. Thus, we all struggle to get to the top, and seek the maximum satisfaction of desires that have been maximized. Interestingly, Plato nowhere challenges Glaucon's assumption about human pleonexia, but rather takes it for granted that this is, as it were, the default psychology of humankind in the absence of law. While perfectly rational philosophers will have tamed the beast within, it is still lurking in their souls, otherwise the proscription of private property would be unnecessary: philosophers would be completely immune to the charms of Gyges' ring. As it is, Plato thinks that 'our dreams make it clear that there is a dangerous, wild, and lawless form of desire in everyone (deinon ti kai agrion kai anomon epithumiôn eidos hekastôi enesti), even in those of us who seem to be entirely moderate and measured' (IX 572b). If Glaucon's analysis of human nature is right, we are all driven by the desire to outdo others and get more and more. This does not mean that our desires are inflamed of necessity: in a city that is well governed, we will only pursue pleasures that are beneficial, and not those that are harmful. But this requires restraint and moderation, and does not come naturally. In book VIII, Socrates clarifies a distinction that surfaced already on the foundation of the 'healthy' and 'fevered' cities in book II between necessary and non-necessary desires and pleasures. Those appetites we (1) can't desist from and (2) whose satisfaction benefit us are necessary, since we are 'by nature compelled to satisfy them' (558d). Those we could get rid of if we practiced from youth are non-necessary provided that their presence leads to no good or the opposite. The desire to eat to the point of health and well-being is natural and necessary. Bread, for instance, is natural and necessary on both counts: it's beneficial, and unless the desire for bread is satisfied, we die. Delicacies are necessary, to the extent that enjoying them is beneficial and promotes our wellbeing. The denizens of the city of pigs do not lead a joyless life, but enjoy measured pleasures. As Socrates describes them, they 'put their honest cakes and loaves on reeds or clean leaves, and, reclining on beds strewn with yew and myrtle, they feast with their children, drink their wine, and crowned with wreaths, hymn the gods. They enjoy sex with one another but bear no more children than their resources allow, lest they fall into either poverty or war' (372b-c). This lifestyle is sustainable, and does not lead to disease or competition for resources. It is also utterly unrealistic for people like us. Our inborn pleonexia makes us seek pleasures that harm both the body and reason and moderation of the soul. Thus, the cravings of actual people are for non-necessary pleasures. In the city with a fever, the citizens do not live in peace and good health, for they indulge their desire for 'all sorts of delicacies, perfumed oils, incense, prostitutes and pastries'. Their enjoyment of prostitutes and pastries, together with a newfound love of meat, create a greater need for doctors than before, and so the city with a fever fills up with a class of professional citizens catering to the needs of the fevered population: beauticians, poets, choral dancers, chefs, cooks and swineherds.9 To finance their indulgence, the citizens 'surrender themselves to the endless acquisition of money' and 'overstep the limit of their necessities' (373d). The appetitive desires that lead to the pursuit of such luxuries are highly specific versions of natural desires for food, sex and drink: Syracusean cuisine, Sicilian-style dishes, and Corinthian girlfriends10, to name a few of the delights that Socrates proscribes for trainee guardians (Rep. III 404d). Such non-necessary desires could be restrained without hurting our chances of leading a healthy and fulfilled life. Indeed, we would be better off without them.11 In book IX, Plato further subdivides the non-necessary desires into lawful and lawless. Lawless desires are not just desires for things that threaten the health of our body and the moderation of our soul, but specifically for things that are shameful in themselves insofar as they break fundamental norms and conventions. Though Plato does not offer a firm criterion for when a desire counts as lawless, his examples are evocative, and suggest that lawless desires are desires for incest, cannibalism, murder, and other proscribed activities. Sleeping with one's mother, or seeking satisfaction with anyone else at all, whether man, beast or god, is lawless, as is foul murder and consumption of forbidden food and drink – like human flesh or blood. Such desires are the ones that Aristotle classify as beastly in EN VII 5 – not because they cannot be resisted – Aristotle envisions that some beastly characters, like the tyrant Phalaris of Acragas, could restrain his desire to eat a child or for some unnatural sexual pleasure (EN VII 5, 1149a14-16) – but because these desires are unnatural in addition to being non-necessary. We do not have to agree with Aristotle's exact list of unnatural behaviors to understand the underlying thought – he throws sex between males in with cannibalism and trichotillomania – nor do we have to agree with his criterion for calling a state or condition bestial. It is still possible to discern a general principle underlying his categorization. In each case, the desire in question is one that arises through disease, bad habits, or congenital conditions that run counter to the norms of nature, as Aristotle perceives them.12 Lawless desires as Plato describes them break apart social bonds and creates enmity and strife in the city by making the citizens pursue satisfaction indiscriminately and in defiance of norms. But unlike Aristotle, Plato takes such paranomic desires to be part of normal human psychology. Lawless non-necessary pleasures aren't simply excessive, since deriving excessive or highly refined pleasure from food, sex or drink still involves objects that are natural for human beings. They are rather derived from acts or objects that are shameful and lawless in themselves. There's no such thing as sleeping with your mother at the right time, in the right way, for the right result, to paraphrase Aristotle. In each case, pursuing lawless pleasures means transgressing natural boundaries. If we believe Plato, that's an impulse that lurks deep in the souls even of law-abiding citizens. How does the greed displayed by the denizens of the fevered city turn into the lawless desires of the tyrant? To answer this question, we need to understand how indulging our limitless desire for unnecessary pleasures unleashes a tyrannical pursuit of lawless and unnatural pleasures. The 'limitless' nature of non-necessary desires suggests that they cannot be satisfied. Indeed, on Callicles' conception of the appetites, satisfaction of all desires would put an end to enjoyment, and so the tyrant will cultivate desires, allowing his appetites to grow as large and numerous as possible while ensuring that he has the power to satisfy them (Gorgias 491e). This is the best life, according to Callicles. Whenever one desire has been sated, we ought to want more, and we ought to be constantly looking for greater and more extreme sources of enjoyment. Once released from restraint, appetitive desires are, in a word, restless. This restlessness manifests as a search for new and increasingly bizarre sources of pleasure: ones that exceed past sources in intensity and duration. In the case of the emerging tyrant, Plato notes that 'pleasures that are latecomers outdo the older ones and steal away their satisfactions' (IX 574a). Those who indulge their non-necessary appetites will quickly adapt, and need new thrills to experience the pleasure they crave, since old sources no longer deliver. It's not just individual people who 'outdo' each other, in other words, but also pleasures themselves. Plato thus discerns an internal dynamic that leads us to seek new objects of enjoyment in place of old, and where the pursuit of gratification leads us from necessary and healthy delicacies, to unnecessary ones, and eventually to the pursuit of lawless pleasures. In the absence of rational restraint and a sense of shame, we will start enjoying objects that are neither necessary nor natural for human beings. This suggests that human pleonexia has the potential to take us all the way to the tyrant's lawless life. 'the Felicity of this life, consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis ultimus (utmost ayme,) nor Summum Bonum, (greatest Good,) as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers. Nor can a man any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continuall progresse of the desire, from one object to another, the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the later. The cause whereof is, That the object of mans desire, is not to enjoy once onely, and for one instant of time; but to assure for ever, the way of his future desire (…) So that I put for the generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death. And the cause of this, is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, that he has already attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more' (p. 70). To Hobbes' mind, then, human acquisitiveness and ambition is not a sign that we seek to 'outdo others and get more and more', as Glaucon posits, but rather an expression of the fear that we shall not have quiet enjoyment of the powers that we already have. In short, we lack assurance for the future. Hobbes thus reads the Republic through a Protestant lens: people in the state of nature reason like Plato's oligarch, hoarding resources as a bulwark against an uncertain future. Had they been assured of future enjoyment, they could have been content with a 'moderate power'. But since they can't secure the means to live well, their desires will be 'perpetuall and restlesse'. To Plato's mind, we all seek more and more because we want to do better than our fellow citizens, not because we are afraid we will lose what little we have. The competitive aspect of pleonexia and its drive towards preeminence plays a crucial part in the emergence of the tyrant. While his pursuit of appetitive pleasure drives the budding tyrant to burn through his parents' wealth, and while the need for money makes him break the law, the tyrant's lawbreaking is not primarily instrumental. For the tyrant, breaking the law and casting off all norms and conventions that restrain him is a way of asserting his power, and so to rise above everyone else – citizens he considers competitors in the pursuit of power. The tyrant is driven by appetites strengthened by erôs and madness, but unlike his father, the democratic man, he would not be content to have his appetites fully catered for, since that is in principle, if not always in practice, compatible with leaving as much and as good for others. To the tyrant's mind, any restriction on his greed is an affront: a sign that he is not yet supreme. It is only when he is above the law – a rule-maker rather than a rule-taker – that the tyrant will have achieved the complete freedom from restraint that to his tyrannical mind makes him 'like a God among humans', not subject to the laws that according to Thrasymachus make the lives of the ruled wretched. It is helpful at this point to consider the tyrant's genealogy, to see how he differs from his close relatives. The tyrant is fifth generation in a family in decline, each son displaying a character that is inferior to that of his father. These increasingly corrupted characters reflect the shortcomings of earlier generations, as well as the misfortunes suffered by them in the city. They also reflect the social conditions in the city – the presence of strife and enmity, or the presence of a class of corrupting idlers: 'drones' as Plato calls them. That there are four types of vice is highlighted already at the end of book IV. Having concluded the provisional analysis of justice as inner harmony, Socrates observes that this should occasion an inquiry into 'how many forms of vice there are'. 'From the vantage point we've reached in our argument, it seems to me that there is one form of virtue and an unlimited number of forms of vice, four of which are worth mentioning' (445c). Since 'it seems likely' that there are 'as many types of soul as there are specific forms of political constitutions' – namely five souls and five constitutions – they must study each in turn, starting with the best. The analysis is delayed, however, while Socrates defends his radical proposals for the guardians'education in books V-VII, and only picked up again at the start of book VIII. The best constitution is the one ruled by one outstanding person or a group of outstanding people: kingship or aristocracy. If this is the correct form of government, all the others are deficient in some way. In descending order, the vicious constitutions and the vicious character states are timocracy and the timocrat, oligarchy and the oligarchic man, democracy and the democratic man, and tyranny and the tyrant. The tyrant, who embodies the worst kind of vice, is thus at the end of a sliding scale of depravity. Aristotle echoes Plato's sentiment about the multiplicity of vice and the singularity of virtue.14 However, Plato differs from Aristotle in thinking of vices as types of constitutions rather than excessive or deficient states flanking the virtuous mean. The reasons are complex, but the fact that the worst kind of vice is concerned with lawless desires suggests that there could be no appropriate way of enjoying them, and so – by Aristotelian standards – no virtuous mean of which tyranny would be the excessive state. Plato identifies different psychopathological causes for each of the steps of the descent into tyranny. There may be an unlimited number of forms of vice, but the causes of discrete kinds are still intelligible and amenable to classification. Virtue – in the form of justice – is rule by reason, and vice the corruption of rational rule.15 This corruption of reason starts with the appearance of the timocrat, a lover of physical training and hunting, as well as exploits in war. He is the son of an aristocrat in a city that isn't well governed, and ends up torn between the influence of his father, and the rest of the household, which pulls him away from moderation and virtue. His aristocratic father leads a private life and doesn't fight back when he is insulted, whether in private or in public in the courts. As a result, he is put at a disadvantage. The timocrat's ambitious mother is angered by her husband's diffidence and blames him for it: 'she tells her son that his father is unmanly, too easy-going, and all the other things that women repeat over and over again in such cases' (549d). As a result, the timocrat is pulled in contrary directions: 'His father nourishes the rational part of his soul and makes it grow; the other nourish the spirited and appetitive parts' (550b). What the timocrat comes to realize is that 'those in the city who do their own work are called fools and held to be of little account', and so he starts craving money as a means to self-assertion. Since he is not a bad man by nature, but merely keeps bad company, Plato argues that he settles in the middle, and surrenders the rule of himself to the middle part – the victory-loving and spirited part. He becomes honour loving and proud, and subordinates the search for truth to a spirited pursuit of positions of high office. However, whether we achieve or retain high office depends more on those who confer such honours than those on which they are conferred, and so a fundamentally decent timocrat will eventually 'crash against the city like a ship against a reef, spilling out all his possessions, even his life' (553a). The oligarch is the timocrat's son. He watches with alarm as his father suffers a reversal of fortune. The mature timocrat sticks to his principles despite public disapproval, placing honour above all else. When his enemies bear false witness against him in court, he ends up put to death or exiled or disenfranchised. The oligarch, at first inclined to follow in his father's footsteps, now sees him lose everything: 'humbled by poverty, he turns greedily to making money, and, little by little, saving and working, he amasses property' (553b). The oligarch desires money, not as a means to the satisfaction of his desires, but rather as an insurance policy against the vicissitudes of fortune. He 'places the appetitive and money-making part on the throne, setting it up as a great king within himself, adorning it with golden tiaras and collars and girding it with Persian swords' (553c), not because he seeks pleasure from the satisfaction of his appetitive desires, which he seeks to keep minimal and subordinate to the overarching goal of amassing wealth. The oligarchic man is a miser; he wants money for the power and security that it represents when it remains unspent, not for the pleasure it secures when squandered. In this regard, the oligarchic