Thucydides and Plato Democracy

Southern Political Science Association
Thucydides and Plato on Democracy and Trust

Author(s): Gerald M. Mara
Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 63, No. 3 (Aug., 2001), pp. 820-845
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2691715 .
Accessed: 13/08/2011 12:17
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Cambridge University Press and Southern Political Science Association are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Politics.
http://www.jstor.org
Thucydides and Plato on Democracy and Trust
Gerald M. Mara
Georgetown University
For a variety of reasons, the problem of political trust has become an important issue within con-
temporary democratic theory, especially within theories of deliberative democracy. This article
argues that contributions from classical political philosophy-specifically Thucydides' representa-
tion of the Mytilenean debate and the Platonic dialogue, Pr-otagoras-can enrich that discussion.
The paper suggests that deliberative democratic theory's treatment of political trust raises a series
of questions that the perspective does not fully acknowledge or engage. It then offers intersecting
readings of these two classical works that, I suggest, make constructive contributions on three
fronts. First, they clarify the goodness of political trust in democratic regimes. Second, they under-
score the need to focus on the substantive outcomes as well as on the procedural arrangements
of deliberative democracy. Third, they clarify the dependence of warranted trust on certain forms
of virtue. The conclusion is not that deliberative democratic theory must give way to some sort of
return to the classics, but that contemporary democratic theory can be enhanced through an appre-
ciation of classical political philosophy's contributions and criticisms.
Perspectives on Political Trust in Contemporary
Democratic Theory
A
n important development within democratic political theory is its concern
with political trust.1 However, while many writers agree that the presence of
trust is essential to a democratic community's well-being, there is considerable
variation about what political trust means and why it is valuable for democra-
cies. Liberal or contractarian approaches see political trust as individual or group
willingness to cooperate with others in collective action (Hardin 1999, 24-26).
Trust is built by developing institutions that provide predictable and effective
means for influencing and monitoring public policy. Political trust is thus an
instrumental good that contributes to the ability of political actors to achieve
their individual or group goals (Luhmann 1979, 88-89). Consequently, identi-
In addition to those of the anonymous reviewers, I am grateful for the critical comments of
Richard Dagger, Suzanne Dovi, Albert Dzur, Jill Frank, Maria Murray Riemann and, particularly,
Mark Warren.
'For a representative set of treatments see Elshtain et al. (1998, 6); Putnam (1993, 171-85);
Rosenblum (1998, 47-53) and Warren (1999).
THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, Vol. 63, No. 3, August 2001, Pp. 820-845
?D 2001 Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road,
Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.
Thucydides and Plato on Democracy and Trust 821
fying effective conditions for political trust does not require any investigation
of the particular purposes of political action. Political mistrust is a correspond-
ing unwillingness to cooperate because institutional supports are absent or in-
effective. Communitarians, on the other hand, often see political trust as signaling
an encompassing sense of membership in a shared moral community (cf. Bel-
lah 1985, Ch. 11; Elshtain et al. 1998, 6; Fukuyama 1995, 336). Here, political
trust stems from a confidence that one's associates share the same basic con-
ceptions of the good and that they value the same qualities of character or the
same virtues. Political mistrust reflects suspicions that one's fellow citizens are
too fragmented in their value orientations to develop and to act on a meaning-
ful understanding of the common good.
Deliberative democratic theory has provided an account of political trust
that has attempted to improve upon both liberal and communitarian variants.
While the political theory of deliberative democracy admits considerable vari-
ation (Bohman and Rehg 1997, ix), its core commitment is to institutions that
foster the examination of policy alternatives through the rational interaction of
all affected parties, privileging no voice because of power or status (Habermas
1996, 108; Young 1997, 394-95). Like the liberal contractarian model, delib-
erative democratic theory conceptualizes political trust as the willingness to
place oneself under the power of others in order to engage in collective action
(Warren 1999, 311). The two perspectives also agree that political trust is
enabled by institutions that make the actions of those trusted subject to careful
scrutiny (Hardin 1999, 29-30; Warren 1999, 338-40). However, deliberative
democratic theory is also compatible with communitarianism in its focus on
the importance of citizen agency and in its appreciation of how political and
social interactions influence citizens' interpretations of their own interests.
Thus, deliberative democratic theory is concerned not only with the condi-
tions ensuring trust in elites (vertical trust), but also with arrangements that
can enable citizens to trust one another (horizontal trust) (Offe 1999, 44). This
perspective therefore maintains that involvement in deliberative interactions
can transform and enhance senses of individual identity to help individuals
become less parochial and more tolerant (Warren 1992, 8-23; Young 1997,
384-45). Finally, deliberative democrats are also more expansive than liberal
contractarians in their treatment of what counts as warranted trust. From the
liberal perspective, trust is warranted whenever institutions ensure that it is in
the trusted's interests to be trustworthy (Hardin 1999, 26). In addition, the
deliberative democratic perspective requires that a society's normative regula-
tions themselves be ethical, treating the substantive outcomes of democratic
processes as potentially relevant to assessments of political trust (Warren 1999,
327). Yet deliberative democrats do not go so far as to see political trust
requiring the kind of strong moral agreement demanded by the communitari-
ans. To do so would be to move illegitimately from an inherited community of
norms to normative ethical prescriptions (Warren 1999, 327). For deliberative
democratic theory, then, political trust means that there are legitimate grounds
822 Gerald M. Mara
for believing that both elites and ordinary citizens will sincerely follow ratio-
nal procedures in deciding upon and carrying out collective decisions. This
belief is supported not only by sanctions that would punish violations but also
by norms that foster behavior patterns or qualities of character that make the
participants trustworthy (Offe 1999, 70-72).
While deliberative democratic theory provides a treatment of political trust
that is more complete and nuanced than those offered by either the liberal
contractarians or the communitarians, there are incongruities and omissions in
its approach. The first concerns its need to be clearer on why trust is a good
for democratic communities. It is skeptical of the liberal contractarian view
that political trust is purely instrumental. Yet it is also reluctant to follow the
communitarians and see political trust as intrinsic to the moral life of a
strong community. Deliberative democratic theory seems right to reject both
of these positions as inadequate, but it is less forthcoming in clarifying its
own position.
Part of the reason for this is found in a second series of difficulties, con-
nected with the deliberative democrats' preferences for engaging procedural
over substantive questions. When evaluating public choices, deliberative dem-
ocrats ask if decision-making procedures have enabled uncoerced and nonmanip-
ulated agreements among all of the affected parties. When asked to justify the
moral standing of these procedures, deliberative democrats generally appeal to
the framework of discourse ethics (Habermas 1996, 107-9). Yet this framework
itself focuses on the procedural conditions that would allow rational individu-
als to reach understanding (Cohen 1997, 72; Habermas 1984, 286-95; 1996, 5,
97, 153, 429). Discourse ethics concentrates on procedures in order to avoid
problematic judgments about outcomes or controversial references to the hu-
man good (Estlund 1997, 175). However, it seems difficult to make a convinc-
ing case for the moral superiority of deliberative procedures without indicating
how they contribute to human well-being understood in more substantive ways.
Eventually, the moral endorsement of these institutions needs to be related to
identifiable aspects of the person (dignity and autonomy) deserving of respect.
(cf. Mara 1985, 1051-153). Similarly, it seems difficult to ignore substantive
outcomes in assessing the value of the procedures that tend to produce them.2
To the extent that deliberative democratic theory ignores or suppresses either
2Habermas' (1996, 355) illustrative list of the public interest positions (environmental protec-
tion, consumer product safety, animal welfare) that an enhanced deliberative process would em-
power is not neutral with regard to content. While I might see the empowerment of these voices as
a good thing, there is no reason to presume that this outcome is any more integral to the procedures
of deliberative democracy than the empowerment of those who argue that an expanded use of
natural resources, freeing enterprise from the constraints of governmental regulations, or the right
to use inferior species for enhancing human well being are public goods. However, for Habermas it
is clear that one of the principal values of deliberative democratic procedures is that they empower
voices that deserve empowerment.
of these considerations, its evaluative scope is considerably narrower than that
of the thoughtful citizen.3
Finally, there is deliberative democratic theory's awkward treatment of the
virtues. Its institutional focus is on political and sociological forms that en-
hance citizens' capacities for monitoring the trustworthiness of elites and for
participating in trusting and trust-building relations with one another. In the
work of Habermas (1996, 287-88) and Offe (1999, 73-76), this means enhanc-
ing communicative political competence. Yet the emphasis on self-transformation
potentially involves deliberative democratic theory in a much broader investi-
gation of how effective democratic citizenship contributes to more complete
forms of human flourishing. While deliberative institutions may support quali-
ties needed to establish the communicative bases of vertical and horizontal trust,
these same institutions presuppose the presence of intellectually responsible
and morally decent citizens who have been socialized by a wider array of in-
fluences. In this connection, deliberative democratic theory is more involved
than some of its proponents might wish with the communitarian issue of how
cultural norms influence the development of certain virtues.
I believe that deliberative democratic theory's treatment of political trust can
be enhanced by building on interpretations of two important classical texts:
Thucydides' representation of the debate over the city of Mytilene in the War
Between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians and the Platonic dialogue, Pro-
tagoras. As read here, each text considers the question of why particular forms
of trust are good for political communities, particularly those guided by demo-
cratic deliberation. Thucydides' treatment of the Mytilenean debate indicates
that political trust is central to the quality of political life in a democratic com-
munity because it allows its members to engage difficult and controversial ques-
tions about the good. Political trust is good for democracies in a way that goes
beyond its instrumental contribution to collective action. Plato's dialogue ex-
tends this discussion to suggest that warranted trust in the outcomes of these
engagements requires the presence of citizens who practice certain virtues. These
3In a way this is implicit in Estlund's (1997, 173-204) attempt to argue for a kind of epistemic
proceduralism as the grounding for democratic authority. Epistemic proceduralism identifies con-
ditions under which democratic deliberation would be most likely to take seriously the rational
(rather than simply the interest-based) grounds for public choices. It is offered as an alternative
both to fair proceduralism, which is "insensitive to reasons" and to correctness theory, which ties
the legitimacy of a democratic decision to its conformity with a substantive standard identified in
procedurally-independent ways. For Estlund, democratic theory is confined to dealing with ques-
tions of legitimacy. Since judgments about legitimacy cannot be held hostage to varying views
about correctness, democratic theory must decline to comment on correctness except through the
filter of procedure. Yet there does not seem to be any reason why democratic theory could not
interrogate the correctness of particular policy choices, while also maintaining that the incorrect-
ness of particular choices should not by themselves undermine the legitimacy of democratic au-
thority. In this respect, democratic theory would come more to resemble the perspective of thoughtful
citizens who very often challenge the correctness of policy choices, without denying the legitimacy
of the procedures which determined them.
824 Gerald M. Mara
are not simply the virtues reflective of a homogenous moral community, but
rather those that emerge from a critical engagement with cultural norms. A
healthy democratic polity therefore also requires the continuing presence of
a kind of mistrust that goes beyond the institutional monitoring of elites to
include the kind that makes cultural self-criticism possible. Thus, while delib-
erative democratic theory is right to criticize the claims made by liberal con-
tractarians and communitarians, without the additional insights of the classical
view, its own treatment of the contributions and complications of political trust
in democratic communities is incomplete, both in the sense that it passes over
important analytic considerations and in the sense that it underserves the needs
of democratic citizens.
For some, of course, any attempt to use Thucydides and Plato as resources in
this discussion is mistaken. Their contributions are said to be blunted, first, by
the huge gap that separates their premodern social context from our modern
one (Habermas 1996, 487). Next is the antidemocratic attitude that these two
thinkers seemingly exhibit. However, there are reasons to believe that both sets
of criticisms are exaggerated. Those who argue that classical political thought
is irrelevant to contemporary political discourse often seem to rely on the im-
plicit and, I believe, false premise that these forms of thought are so embedded
in their political cultural contexts that no attempt to employ them in broader
conversations can be successful. Moreover, as Bernard Yack has argued, the
notion of modernity itself needs to be seen as a construction. While it is useful
in identifying some of the distinguishing features of our mode of social life, it
is distorting if it is taken either as a "condition that shapes all aspects of mod-
ern experience" (1997, 7) or as a decisive reason for seeing our society as
being altogether distinct from premodern ones (1997, 90-96). Thus, empirical
investigations of contemporary developed societies may identify non-modern
as well as modern aspects, just as historical investigations of ancient societies
may discover institutions or practices that are quite familiar. Josiah Ober's re-
cent examination of the tradition of dissent in ancient Athens explains the con-
tinued attraction exerted by these Greek political texts by pointing to their
connections with a society that was, in some respects, strikingly like ours (1998, 4).
There are also reasons for moderating extreme views of Thucydides' and
Plato's attitudes toward democracy. Though neither endorses democracy as the
best regime, both are even more critical of its violent oligarchical alternative
(Thucydides 8.66.1-5; Plato Seventh Letter (Epistles, Plato 1914) 324 c2-325
a6). It is also not clear that either Plato or Thucydides offers a non-problematic
vision of any preferable achievable alternative to democracy. A number of read-
ings of the Republic see Socrates' proposal for philosophic kingship as an indi-
cation of the limits of political reform (cf. Strauss 1963, 127; Nichols 1987, 3).
Thucydides' express endorsement of the politeia of the five thousand as the best
Athenian regime during his time (8.97.2-3) is far from being simply anti-
democratic even on its own terms. Its literal character is complicated by the
transitory duration of that regime (Aristotle, Athe-naion Politeia 41, 2-3). Its
more ironic outcome is a potential criticism of Pericles' rule, which was "dem-
ocratic only in name" (2.65.9-10). Finally, the portrait that each author paints of
democracy is perhaps more nuanced than many critics suggest (cf. Mara 1997;
Monoson 2000; Ober 1998, Chs. 2, 4, 9, 10; Saxonhouse 1998, 273-74; 1996,
59-86). While it would be misleading to treat Thucydides and Plato simply as
democratic theorists, we should consider what each says about democracy and
trust.
Thucydides: Political Trust as a Fragile
Deliberative Good
The debate within the Athenian assembly over the punishment of Mytilene is
occasioned by the city's central role in the revolt of nearly the entire island of
Lesbos from the Athenian empire in the fourth year of the war (3.2.1-3). After
the Athenian general Paches subdued the city, he sent the thousand oligarchs
believed responsible to Athens for trial, remaining at Mytilene to await the as-
sembly's orders about the rest of the city. In a proceeding whose details are not
revealed, the assembly determines to kill all of the adult males and to sell the
women and children into slavery (3.36.1-2). The next day, however, a majority
of the citizens (to pleion ton polit5n) urges a reconsideration of the decision,
for it now seems a monstrous thing to do. The subsequent debate is repre-
sented, selectively, by Thucydides. While many parties speak on both sides (3.36.6),
we read of only two, the demagogue Cleon and the mysterious Diodotus. They
are noteworthy not simply because they make the most influential cases for
each position, but because they address critically the value of Athenian deliber-
ative democratic institutions and the place of trust in democratic communities.
Cleon's angry speech begins with a criticism of the trust relations that hold
the Athenians together. He says that their openness toward one another makes
them blind to the harsh realities involved in ruling others (heteron archein)
(3.37.1-2) and that Athenian rule is particularly disadvantaged by the current
functioning of democratic institutions. His response is to engender ever widen-
ing circles of mistrust, first in the move to reconsider the first decision, then in
any speakers who might argue for a policy of moderation, and ultimately in the
political institutions that make such a reexamination possible. As an alterna-
tive, he recommends very different forms of trust that encourage neither delib-
eration nor democracy.
Sounding (oddly) like Socrates in Plato's Gorgias, Cleon assails the assem-
bly for being vulnerable to deceptive rhetoric. Democratic decisions are ever
changing because of a passion for novel speeches (3.31.1-2; 3.38.4-6). Those
in the assembly are often "simply overcome by the pleasures of hearing. . . and
[behave] more like those who sit by and watch the displays of sophists than
those taking counsel (boule-umenois) about the city" (3.38.7). Cleon thus trivi-
alizes the reconsideration of the original decision by characterizing it as an
example of a general lack of seriousness. We might be more inclined to see this
debate precisely as a kind of taking counsel (boule-uein), out of a concern for
justice once the passion of anger has diminished. That Cleon takes this alterna-
826 Gerald M. Mara
tive seriously as a threat is suggested by his subsequent treatments of justice
and rationality.
Cleon's speech begins by equating Athenian interest with a concern for jus-
tice. Yet he ends by subordinating justice (dike-) to advantage (sympheron) and
by establishing a certain kind of advantage as the only rational goal for human
beings. Initially, Cleon accuses Mytilene of the greatest injustice; its privileged
position among the allies makes its rebellion especially damaging (3.39.1-2).
In their earlier defense of their rebellion before the Spartans, the Mytileneans
defended their behavior by pointing to the dangerous growth in Athens' power
(3.11.3). Cleon's weak response points to how Mytilene's power exceeds the
other allies', while Mytilene's concern is how its power is overwhelmed by
Athens' (3.11.3-4). Moreover, the beginning of Cleon's speech tacitly accepts
the premise of the Mytileneans' excuse when the assembly is told to recognize
the tyrannical nature of Athens' rule (3.37.2). If this is so, it is difficult to see
how Cleon can argue that Mytilene has treated Athens unjustly. He negotiates
this dilemma by recasting injustice as injury and, thus, associating justice (as
retaliation) with interest (3.39.6; 3.40.4). If justice has any residual presence, it
must be as a departure from interest, thus itself representing a potential source
of injury (3.40.4).
Critical rationality could complicate these assertions by questioning the rela-
tionship between interest and justice and by considering the identities of interest
and justice more deeply. As if in response, Cleon looks to the passions as the
only reliable basis for identifying human interests and for settling conflicts be-
tween interest and justice. Cleon's speech is thus designed to recreate the senses
of fear (3.37.1-2; 3.41.8) and anger (3.38.1) felt initially by the Athenians. The
reliability of the passions with regard to the interests also helps to resolve two
paradoxes that frame Cleon's speech as a whole. Though Cleon appears to lead
the de-mos through precisely the sort of rhetoric he condemns, his own speech
escapes self-contradiction because it points clearly to the realities of things, un-
distorted by linguistic novelties (3.38.5-6). And he can passionately assail ir-
rationalities of process and outcome in the assembly because his own passions
of violence and anger are conclusive guides toward what is to be done.
For Cleon, the unambiguous guidance of these passions shows that the true
human interest lies in material accumulation and security, generally achieved
through the exercise of power (3.39.8). Cleon's speech is thus designed to cre-
ate a conception of the city's identity defined in terms of the priorities of the
more ordinary (hoi phauloteroi) rather than those of the more thoughtful (hoi
synetoteroi) (3.37.3-4). In this context, the function of rationality is to identify
strategies for the achievement and protection of these interests. Accounts of
political trust and mistrust are conditioned by these understandings of interest
and rationality. Here, horizontal trust is simply the common recognition of the
priority of material interests and the agreement to cooperate in pursuing them.
Vertical trust is understood as deference to those who are adept and reliable at
offering strategic guidance. Maintaining agreement about the good requires a
constantly vigilant mistrust toward those who argue for conceptions of interest
(being just as a part of one's well-being) or courses of action (leniency toward
Mytilene) that challenge the truths that are plain for everyone to see (3.38.5-
6). The more ordinary should distrust the more thoughtful and instead invest
horizontal trust in one another and vertical trust in Cleon (3.37.4; 3.40.4).
However, Cleon's efforts to create these more focused forms of political trust
are undercut by the psychology that his speech presumes. Cleon's rhetoric ap-
peals initially to a collective Athenian understanding of the city's interests. It
could even be interpreted as calling for enhanced solidarity in the face of po-
tential defections on the part of the so-called allies.4 Yet the speech eventually
calls the stability of such a collective interest into serious question. By relying
on the guidance of the passions, Cleon suggests that the most urgent interests
are simultaneous with physical existence and that any sensible person should
be able to recognize their primacy without socialization. Thus, any cultural self-
understandings that attempt to diminish the importance of these interests (Per-
icles' funeral speech, for example) are mythologies that distort reality. Cleon
does not simply try to replace an inadequate sense of collective trust with a
more adequate version, for his political principles drive a wedge between the
more ordinary and the more thoughtful among the citizens. It is, moreover,
highly appropriate to interpret Cleon's public rhetoric in light of Thucydides'
own assessment of the motivations of those who attempted to succeed Pericles
as "foremost man." Far from being guided by concerns for the city's good, all
were spurred by individual interests in honor and gain (2.65.6-7). Pericles him-
self, in his last speech, recognizes the overwhelming force of private motiva-
tions when he treats a love of one's own goods as the most powerful incentive
for participating in collective action (2.60.2-4). It is thus more accurate to
characterize Cleon's account of the basis of cooperation as a guarded recogni-
tion of predictably self-interested behavior that needs to be controlled through
the canny use of sticks and carrots. This shadow of horizontal civic trust ob-
scures the vulnerabilities of ordinary citizens to the abuses of trusted experts.
Since these experts or leaders are no less susceptible to the drives of egocentric
interest, any trust invested in them is inevitably based on some degree of de-
ception. For example, Cleon's demand that the citizens take their bearings from
the guidance of "the laws" (3.37.3-5), is undercut by the fact that the laws to
which he refers are simply his own rhetorical successes (3.40.4-5), reinforce-
ments of a hierarchy that has Cleon (as the man who wields the most powerful
influence on the demos) (4.21.2-3) at its head.5
Cleon's ridicule of a rationality that is critical of the ends that should be
obvious to all is paralleled by a demonization of any decent citizen who op-
4A solidarity which both Strauss (1963, 213) and Orwin (1984, 315) describe as Spartan.
5As Orwin (1984, 315) comments, while "the laws of Sparta attributed to the Divine Lycurgus
were thought to have been in place and unchanged for four hundred years,. . . the Mytilenian de-
cree passed yesterday at the urging of Cleon." Cleon does speak of the need to obey the laws,
"good or bad." However, this is a bit of clever rhetoric that silences any criticism of his previous
success while maintaining the fiction of his commitment to democratic processes.
828 Gerald M. Mara
poses the partiality and viciousness of those ends. His own perverted version
of trust is thus accompanied by a dangerous form of mistrust. Instead of coun-
seling a healthy skepticism about controversial interest claims, Cleon's mistrust
reinforces a thoughtless acceptance of the most immediate interest claims and
a mistrust of the deliberative institutions that could provide the democracy with
a venue for self-criticism. Cleon's conception of human interests and his pro-
gram for the powerful society reveal not the conditions for trust, but the com-
plete pervasiveness of mistrust.
Diodotus' response to Cleon offers not only an alternative policy regarding
Mytilene but also alternative visions of rationality, politics, and political trust.
However, Diodotus' position is subject to significant interpretive controversies,
in part due to the complexities of his own rhetoric. These controversies gener-
ate different views of Diodotus' relevance for democratic theory. For Clifford
Orwin, Diodotus' critique of democratic practices emphasizes the need for a
political leadership that accepts the permanence of democratic institutions but
recognizes the need to control their functions and outcomes through a rhetoric
that may ultimately compromise democratic capabilities (1984, 320; 1994, 158-
162). Arlene Saxonhouse, however, sees Diodotus as the true democratic theo-
rist of antiquity (1996, 75). My own interpretation sees insights and omissions
in both views. Orwin's careful tracing of the intricacies of Diodotus' rhetoric
may exaggerate the gap between rationality and political trust. What prevents
Diodotus from achieving the status accorded him by Saxonhouse is the degree
to which he despairs of achieving the goods or mitigating the vulnerabilities of
democratic political life.
Diodotus secures a moderation of the initial decision about Mytilene by ar-
guing for an exclusive attention to Athens' advantage apart from any consider-
ation of justice (3.44.1-2). Yet as some commentators (Orwin 1994, 151-5;
Strauss 1963, 234) have recognized, his speech not only achieves a more just
outcome than the original, but also implies a parallel argument based upon
justice, rather than upon advantage. However, Diodotus also appears to serve
justice only by subverting the processes of deliberative democracy, for he vir-
tually begins his speech with the claim that anyone who wishes to benefit the
city must deceive the demos in the assembly (3.43.2-3). Moreover, the final
outcome of the debate reveals that the moderate position loses support once
both sides have been heard (compare 3.36.5 with 3.49.1-2). Diodotus' plea that
the thousand oligarchs "whom Paches thought to be guilty" should be tried
again calmly (kath hesychian) goes unheeded the next day when the assembly
votes to execute them on the motion of Cleon (compare 3.48.2 with 3.50.1). In
this light, we might conclude that the Mytilenean demos is saved from rather
than by deliberative democracy.6 Habermas could interpret this conclusion as
evidence of the inadequacy of the premodern institutions with which Diodotus
6This is, for example, the conclusion of Ober (1998, 104). "And thus the decision making pro-
cesses of the post-Periclean democracy are implicated in Thucydides' demonstration that ideal-type
speech interactions cannot offer a secure grasp of realities or a secure basis for public policy."
must cope (1996, 300-301). Diodotus himself traces his difficulties to basic
human characteristics that complicate both premodern and modern institutional
possibilities.
Like Cleon, Diodotus begins by indicting the deliberations practiced in the
assembly. Yet his characterization of and complaints about democratic pro-
cesses are different. While Cleon criticizes the assembly for encouraging too
much talk, Diodotus focuses on how the assembly's practices frustrate deliber-
ative rationality and, thus, the assembly's own normative potentials.
In counseling the Athenians to pay exclusive attention to advantage, Di-
odotus' argument seems a radicalization of Cleon's. He insists that even if the
Mytileneans turn out to be guilty of injustice, Athens should punish them only
if it would be in the city's interests to do so. Conversely, even if they should
deserve mercy, it should only be granted if it would be "for the city's good"
(3.44.1-3). Yet in making these claims, Diodotus distinguishes his position from
Cleon's in two crucial ways. First, he is not willing simply to convert justice
into interest (as the response to injury). While interest may take priority, setting
the two concerns against one another underscores the separable identity of jus-
tice. Second, Diodotus also raises the possibility that mercy or forgiveness,
determined with reference to a kind of justice, may be somehow connected to
Athens' good. This cannot be true, of course, if Cleon's account of Athens'
interests is the last word. Thus, Diodotus does more than offer an argument
based on justice that parallels an appeal to advantage. He also implicitly urges
rethinking the content of the city's interests based in part on an appreciation of
the goods of justice. While justice is not reducible to interest and while the two
may often be opposed, they may also, while remaining separate, coalesce.7
The source and content of Diodotus' understanding of justice are not imme-
diately clear. He rejects Cleon's implication that the only sensible justice is
retaliation, yet he has already stipulated that justice cannot be reduced to the
strategic calculation of advantage. Given both Diodotus' and Thucydides' re-
marks about nature, searching for some sort of natural standard for justice seems
futile.8 A more tangible origin of Diodotus' beliefs about justice may be Athens'
own institutions, the constructions of a democratic society. When the unnamed
Athenians defend the city to the Spartan allies before the war, they refer to the
Athenian practice of giving greater degrees of equality to the subject cities
7Consequently, Ober's recent reading (1998, 103) of Diodotus' speech may underestimate the
degree to which the separation of justice from advantage also demands a reconsideration of two
ideas that were indistinguishable from one another in Cleon's speech.
8Nature cannot be a standard for Thucydides, perhaps less because of its harshness than because
of its turbulence. Those Thucydidean speakers, the Athenians at Sparta (1.72.1; 1.76.1-4), Her-
mocrates at Gela (4.61.5-6) and the Athenians on Melos (5.105), who refer to the exercise of
power by the strong over the weak as being somehow according to (or not against) nature, speak
from the vantage of a powerful regime or culture that may encourage a view of nature as something
that seems more structured than it is. Thucydides' own treatment of nature sees it being expressed
most clearly within the Corcyrean stasis where, among other things, the meanings of strength and
weakness are problematized (3.84.2-3).
830 Gerald M. Mara
than strict quantifications of power would require (1.72.2-3). Diodotus' appeal
also includes a much different conceptualization of the Athenian empire than
that offered by Cleon, one that is more generous and less violent. From this
perspective, an understanding of justice capable of influencing interests can be
articulated by a rationality that is actualized in a deliberative context; and po-
litical trust can extend beyond strategic cooperation to a mutual conversation
that examines goals.
Yet Diodotus' apparent reliance on deception implies that these goods must
be fostered through nondeliberative means. Orwin connects his interpretation
of this aspect of the speech to questions concerning trust and mistrust in dem-
ocratic regimes (1984, 313-25; 1994, 160-63). While Orwin's Diodotus recog-
nizes the salutary features of healthy political trust, his view of democratic
society eventually opposes an affective form of trust in the guidance of reassur-
ing leaders to deliberative rationality among citizens (1994, 158, 160, 162).
Because Diodotus' treatment of the passions recognizes both their destructive-
ness and their power, he must employ rhetoric rather than encourage delibera-
tion (Orwin 1994, 161), exercising a form of leadership that wisely uses "image
politics" (Orwin 1984, 324; 1994, 162). True democrats thus see Diodotus es-
tablishing a rhetorical hierarchy ("cryptic and mendacious") that undercuts fur-
ther the prospects for deliberative interactions (cf. Euben 1990, 182-83; Ober
1998, 102-3). For Orwin, however, Diodotus' deception is the only plausible
response to the more sinister varieties of image politics that always plague par-
ticipatory democracies. Diodotus sees the assembly afflicted by a Gresham's
law of speeches: the bad drive out the good (1994,158). He also offers a deep
explanation for the diseases of deliberation by pointing to the force of the pas-
sions. No matter how destructive the enterprise, eros leads and hope (elpis)
follows (3.40.5-6). From this perspective, the self-transformation thesis of the
deliberative democrats inevitably falls victim to the passions, which oppose not
simply transformation but even educability.
However, this pessimistic conclusion is partially softened by Diodotus' own
practice, which implicitly encourages a rational reevaluation of human and po-
litical interests that is compatible with what is best in democratic culture. To
the extent that Diodotus encourages the Athenians to be juster than they have to
be, he is employing rhetorical deception to foster a good that is connected with
democratic equality. More generally, while his speech acknowledges the power
of the passions, his speech act recognizes the education that his argument seems
to rule out. Diodotus' confession that one must deceive to improve potentially
raises a criticism of his own speech, effectively encouraging members of his
audience to see beneath a complicated surface to discover an even more com-
plicated core. In this light, the speech presupposes the normative potentials of a
deliberation that his more openly institutional and psychological arguments would
appear to eliminate (3.42.1-2). From this point of view, Diodotus' rational re-
sponse to irrationality, replacing anger with moderation (3.46.3-5), pragmati-
cally respects the normative goals of deliberative rationality. The immediate
rescue of the Mytileneans opens onto possibilities that are too ambiguous to be
simply the products of an image politics. Diodotus does not offer his own ac-
count of Athens' interests that would match Cleon's in precision while oppos-
ing it in content. Rather, he proceeds by calling the adequacy of Cleon's version
into question in a way that requires additional discursive scrutiny.9
To the extent that educability is a pragmatic possibility, Diodotus also leaves
room for the development and influence of a form of democratic political trust
that supports rather than opposes rationality. Rather than being simply an in-
strument in the collective pursuit of material success or an affective alternative
to reasoned deliberation, this form of political trust would be a continuing part-
ner within attempts to determine the best direction for collective action within
a democratic context. While Diodotus' speech implicitly appeals to the most
thoughtful Athenians, he does not attempt to use that category either to privi-
lege or to marginalize any particular class of citizens. Disagreements about the
good thus set the pragmatic context that makes political trust both necessary
and desirable. At the same time, these disagreements represent the strongest
barriers against establishing meaningful forms of that trust.
Diodotus' speech act could be interpreted as identifying both the inevitable
need for and the substantial barriers against confronting disagreements about
the good in a deliberative democratic context. At one level, his position could
be read as a warning against subjecting deliberative institutions to immediate
political pressures (cf. Habermas 1996, 311-14). The damaging impacts of these
pressures are apparent within the Mytilenean debate as practical rationality gives
way to political necessity. If what Diodotus says about the power of the pas-
sions is true, no one involved in the Mytilenean rebellion can be punished justly.
Yet near the end of his speech, his references shift from the innocent and the
guilty to the democrats and the oligarchs (3.47.1-2), inevitably accepting the
executions decreed the next day. Diodotus is led to this pass not by personal
callousness or political partisanship, but by the recklessness that is potentially
embedded in the assembly's own practices. The immediate pressures for deci-
sion coupled with the residual influences of anger make quietness (he-sychia)
impossible.
Yet for Diodotus the greatest impediments to healthy deliberative institutions
and strong senses of warranted trust are not so much institutional as psycholog-
ical, the hope that always follows in the wake of eros. His implicit treatment of
deliberative democracy thus courts paradoxes of its own. His view of the pas-
sions makes any prospect for what the deliberative democrats call self-
transformation virtually impossible, yet his own pragmatics presuppose the
possibility of a more limited educability. Diodotus' rhetoric can thus be read as
9In a sense, Diodotus' appeal to the possibility for an enhanced rationality and an enhanced
sense of horizontal trust is implicitly recognized by Orwin (1984, 324) when he comments that
Diodotus' speech is an appeal to the Athenians' better selves.
832 Gerald M. Mara
a complex and conflicted response to his understanding of the needs for and
barriers against democratic rationality.
Plato: Trust, Education and the Virtues
Diodotus' contribution to the Mytilenean debate indicates why a political
trust supportive of rational deliberation about the good should be seen as intrin-
sically desirable in democratic societies. Yet he also suggests that the develop-
ment of this sort of political trust requires the nearly impossible task of educating
passionate and self-interested human beings. In so doing, Diodotus also poten-
tially expands the scope of the discussion beyond narrow political institutions
to a broader set of cultural forms. This broader discussion of education occurs
in the Platonic dialogue Protagoras.'0 Within the dialogue, the issue of educa-
tion arises when Socrates is awakened by the young Athenian Hippocrates, who
begs to be taken to meet the eminent sophist, Protagoras. Under Socrates' ques-
tioning, Hippocrates admits that he does not wish to become a practitioner of
the sophist's art; indeed he would be ashamed (aischunoio) to display himself
as such before the Greeks, presumably due to the bad reputations that the soph-
ists have as subverters of civic values (cf. Meno 91 cl-6). Since Socrates seems
wary of exposing Hippocrates to Protagoras, he could exploit this sense of shame
and return Hippocrates to the care of the culture, sowing seeds of mistrust in
educational innovation on the basis of a conservative trust in the rightness of
established conventions. Instead, Socrates proposes that they visit and question
Protagoras together. Within this initial exploration, three possibilities for edu-
cation arise: that provided by specialists or experts, that transmitted by the guid-
ance of the elders, and that which occurs through interactive dialogue. Each
has a political parallel. The reliance on specialists is compatible with a politics
of strategic rationality. The recourse to the elders could be extended into a
more general view of the need for enculturation within a community of mem-
ory. The development of individuals through discursive interaction is most closely
parallel to a politics of deliberation.
'?Two general observations about Plato's treatment of these questions in the Protagowas need to
be made at the outset. First, whatever the nature of Socrates' position on virtue and politics in this
dialogue, it is not based on any sort of metaphysics of the ideas. While I find attempts to periodize
the writing of the dialogues to be generally unconvincing (Mara 1997, 8), the arguments offered by
Socrates here do not, for whatever reason, depend upon or incline toward a sophisticated and prob-
lematic separation between the objects of perception, opinion, and discourse and the objects of a
much purer form of intellection. Second, the conversation that occurs in the Protagoras is hardly
isolated from the harsher realities of politics, certainly not from the Peloponnesian War. The dia-
logue's action is set shortly before the war's outbreak. Nussbaum (1986,105) goes so far as to say
that the work offers a view of Athenian high culture just prior to the onset of the conflict that
disordered it. The concluding section, which problematically identifies the noble (kalos) risk of
death in war with the enjoyment of great pleasure (359e-360a), in a way provides a hint of the
political events to come.
Each approach to education is also cognate to a certain conception of trust:
the training of specialists to a trust in experts, the guidance of relations to a
trust in cultural norms, and the involvement in discourse to a more complicated
trust in practices that allow the interrogation of strategies and hierarchies. Within
these forms of trust, only the third requires continuous involvement with a form
of mistrust. While the first two exclude or dismiss mistrusted sources before
the fact, discursiveness functions by continuously juxtaposing trust and mis-
trust; it relies upon a trusted activity to examine both the content and the sources
of apparently conclusive decisions, which are thus, to a degree, mistrusted. Yet
unlike deliberative democrats, who see institutional arrangements balancing trust
and mistrust within democratic communities, Socrates' experience suggests that
the relationship between trust and mistrust involves inevitable and unresolvable
tensions.
While a number of commentators believe that Protagoras articulates perhaps
the first truly democratic political theory,"I my reading of the dialogue sug-
gests that Socrates' relation to democratic regimes is potentially the more pos-
itive of the two. Protagoras seems to dismiss Athens' complex political sociology
in his own apologia for his sophistry. Within the house of Callias (the Athenian
rich enough to have spent more money on sophists than anyone else-cf. Apol-
ogy 20, a4-b1O) Protagoras says that attempts to disguise his sophist's identity
would not deceive "those among human beings who are most capable of action
in the city," though they would escape the notice of the many, "who, so to
speak, are aware of practically nothing" (316 a6-7). While this statement may
conform with Thucydides' observation that Periclean Athens was democratic
only in name, it is still an odd description of a democratic city's political cul-
ture. With respect to trust, Protagoras implies that the many can simply be
trusted (predicted) to follow the political guidance of the few.
However, Protagoras eventually is forced to acknowledge that democratic
political culture is more complex. He tells Hippocrates that his teaching will
enable him to order his own affairs better and to "become most powerful in the
city whether in speech or in action" (318 e6-319 a2). With Protagoras agree-
ing, Socrates redescribes this as teaching the political art (politike techne-) so
as to create good citizens (agathous politous) (319 a3-7). If Socrates' descrip-
tion of his teaching is accurate, Protagoras would be able to make those whom
he educates politically trustworthy; the trust invested in the few would be war-
ranted on the basis of their learning the skills necessary for good citizenship. If
there is a preexistent community of interests between the many and the few,
Protagoras could teach experts who would be particularly adept at identifying
effective strategies for furthering the city's interests. Yet this possibility has
"
See Farrar (1988, 77-98), Nussbaum (1986, 103-5) and Schiappa (1991, 181-87). All of these
views depend largely on particular interpretations of the Protagoras as a Platonic dialogue. Conse-
quently, an interpretive argument with different conclusions is the right kind of response, quite
apart from differences over the particular interpretations being offered.
834 Gerald M. Mara
already been challenged both by Socrates' description of Hippocrates' motiva-
tions (that he is anxious to become notable in the city-316 cl-2) and by
Protagoras' unreconstructed statement about the benefits his teaching provides
(the sensible ordering of one's own affairs and the exercise of the greatest
power in the city). Alternatively, Protagoras could practice a more reformative
political education among the powerful, creating good citizens by making their
interests more compatible with the good of the community. Yet this would
require Protagoras to reconceive his initial political judgment, praising the
excellences of the few because they contribute to the flourishing of the
democracy. 12
Socrates offers a more basic challenge to Protagorean education when he
says that he does not think that civic virtue is teachable (319 a8-b4). He sup-
ports this claim with observations, first, about the practices of the democratic
assembly and then about educational outcomes among the young elite. Socrates
says that the assembly's practice points to the absence of any political art. While
there are technical experts who deal with means, there are no policy experts
who speak to ends (319 b4-d8). Socrates offers no opinion about the quality of
democratic decisions. One possibility is that they are made in ignorance, but
this conclusion is justified only if there is no available political intelligence
beyond an expertise modeled on the arts. He also says nothing about the moral
outcomes of these epistemic confusions. However, the subsequent criticism of
elite education is expressly ethical. The city's best are unable to hand down
their virtue to their sons, and the first named example of such a failure is Per-
icles (319 e3-320 a4).
Both friends and critics of Plato have interpreted Socrates' treatment of the
assembly as a complaint about the absence of directive knowledge in democra-
cies. Yet his assessment can also be read as a much more complicated treatment
of democratic politics, revealing, like Diodotus' speech, both its potentials and
its dangers. While Socrates hardly suggests that the democracy is the "best"
regime,13 this treatment of the democracy is more favorable than the sub-
sequent examination of the elites. His description of the assembly implies that
it keeps experts available while allowing citizens equal access to deliberations
about public choices (319 d4-7). According to this view, expertise as particular
craft knowledge could be the basis for a limited sort of vertical trust, while
egalitarianism and publicity would foster horizontal trust, the understanding
12In Josiah Ober's view, this was the effective result of the democracy's increasing control over
public rhetoric in the fourth and fifth centuries (1989, 336-39). Ober's analysis may skirt the issue
of whether such rhetorical control was really paralleled by warranted trust.
13 Another way of putting this is that the Protagoras does not offer any sort of general solution to
what might be called the political problem, that is, it does not address either the nature or the
possibility of the best regime (cf. Republic 450 c8-dl). Instead, it may raise the question of how
human beings who are at least partially political animals should cope with the unavailability of any
general solution. In a sense, this may be one of the purposes of the Republic as well. For a further
development of this point see Mara 1997, 136-47.
that one may speak openly and receive the full consideration of one's fellow
citizens. The institutions held together by horizontal trust would deal with more
fundamental questions and serve as a source of oversight, preventing abuses of
vertical trust by experts trying to overstep their bounds. The possibility that a
less rigid form of vertical trust might emerge is neither expressly stated nor
expressly denied.'4 For example, Socrates could accept the difference between
thoughtful and vulgar citizens, yet deny that they could be distinguished by
professional, social, or economic markers.
However, as a description of the assembly's deliberations, this account has
difficulties. First, the separation between technical and policy questions is im-
possible to sustain in light of Socrates' own illustrative list of matters of techne-.
The examples of buildings and ships inevitably bring to mind the walls, the
harbors, and the navy-the material infrastructure of the Athenian empire. These
technical discussions within the assembly are inevitably politicized (cf. Gor-
gias 455 d8-e4). To the extent that they are presented as exclusively technical
questions, their politicization (suggesting that can implies ought) is concealed.
Second, the influences of both controlled expertise and egalitarian deliberative
processes can be heavily compromised by rhetorical appeals to the passions. In
the Gorgias, the title character claims that the power of rhetoric can eclipse
both expertise and deliberation (456 b7-c7), and Socrates himself associates
the abuses of rhetoric with democratic institutions (503 bl-3).'5 Here, in front
of those most likely to be suspicious or contemptuous of democracy, Socrates
offers a potentially more positive assessment of democratic deliberation, imply-
ing (in agreement with at least a part of Diodotus) that destructive rhetoric is a
combatable pathology rather than a fatal genetic defect of deliberative poli-
tics.'6 Socrates is much harsher in his criticism of elite education. If handing
down virtue to the young requires not technical training but moral guidance,
the deficiencies of the young must be traced much more directly to the defi-
ciencies of the elders.
Protagoras responds to Socrates' skepticism about the teachability of virtue
with a more general statement, part myth, part argument, about politics. Yet his
attempt to show that the virtues are teachable ends by clustering the virtues
along psychological and political lines in ways that heighten possibilities for
political conflict and mistrust. Protagoras' myth about the origins of cities be-
gins with the premise that a struggle for survival is the fundamental natural
condition (320 el-321 b8). Originally, human beings responded to their indi-
vidual vulnerabilities by associating, but they ended up fighting continually
14For a discussion of this issue in the context of the Republic see Mara 1997, 145-46.
15For a case that Socrates' attitude in the Gorgias is more recuperative of democratic politics,
see Mara 1993, 168-79.
16In this respect, Socrates' statements about the assembly are compatible with the views of more
committed democrats. This may be another instance of what Sara Monoson (2000) sees as a Pla-
tonic use of the resources of democracy within his own complex criticism of democracy.
836 Gerald M. Mara
among themselves (322 b-c).17 Out of a desire to preserve the species, Zeus
instructed Hermes to endow all human beings with justice (dike-) and restraint
(aid5s), qualities allowing basic levels of peaceful cooperation. The existence
of any political community implies the effective presence of the political vir-
tues of justice, moderation, and piety, condensed by Protagoras into the "manly
virtues" (andros arete-n) (324 e4-325 a2). For Protagoras, this mythical ethol-
ogy solves the first of Socrates' puzzles about political virtue in Athens. Every-
one is entitled to address policy concerns in the assembly because the political
virtues needed for cooperation (which do not include intelligence) are univer-
sally distributed. Protagoras then explains the apparent failures of education
among the young by implying that Socrates has set his sights too high, failing
to realize that even those whom society fears and punishes as criminals are far
less menacing than those who exist apart from cultures (327 c7-d6).
From this general perspective, the civic virtues based on dike- and aidos seem
distributed in a way that is broadly egalitarian, enabling the minimal degrees of
horizontal trust (a reasonable confidence that one's fellow citizens will respect
the basic laws of civility) fostered by and supportive of political stability. Be-
cause of the continuous need to resort to punishment, however, this sort of
horizontal trust seems hardly distinguishable from social coercion, made nec-
essary by the tendency of human beings to pursue their own interests in disre-
gard of justice.
These conflicts reemerge in the exchanges between Socrates and Protagoras
over the virtues. In response to Socrates' questions, Protagoras says that virtue
is a single thing, with justice, moderation, and piety as its parts (329 d3-5).
Though they are parts of a single, complex whole, one can possess some of the
virtues but not others. Some people are brave but unjust or just but not wise
(329 e5-7). When Protagoras adds courage and wisdom (the greatest to
megiston-of the parts) to the enumerated list of virtues, both are introduced in
connection with the practice of injustice. If justice stands for the virtues needed
for political stability, wisdom and courage can be disruptive, in the name of
either a subculture that rejects equality or a powerful individual who asserts
himself against the community as a whole. In one of the many dramatic ironies
of the Protagoras, its conversation about civic virtue occurs in the presence of
one of Athens' most violent oligarchs (Critias) and perhaps its most spectacular
traitor (Alcibiades).'8
"lInitially, Protagoras suggests that humans were able to preserve themselves from hunger and
hostile climates through the gifts of fire and wisdom in the arts, stolen by Prometheus from Zeus
(321d7-322a3). The possession and use of such gifts do not enable humans to coexist peacefully
among themselves. Indeed, in an oppressive culture these resources could be the instruments of
coercion and control, as they are at the beginning of the cave story in Republic, book seven.
'8David Wolfsdorf (1998, 127-30) provides a comprehensive treatment of the historical identi-
ties of the named members of the Protagoras' immediate audience of gentlemen. He argues persua-
sively that appreciating the presence of these particular people is highly significant for the interpretation
of the dialogue's "content." I owe my acquaintance with this source to Richard Avramenko.
There are parallel disruptions to possibilities for political trust. If the virtues
of the distinguished work against civic equality and political stability, they can-
not support any sort of trust in elites. While this sort of mistrust may generate
forms of internal trust for each of the contending subcultures, these are elicited
by resentment or fear and reinforced by aggression or resistance. In different
ways, all of Protagoras' societies the mythical community saved by Zeus, the
minimalist community held together by harsh education, and the pragmatic com-
munity which surrounds his own professional activity-are defined by the ab-
sence of any meaningful sense of trust.
The moral and political hazards of particular forms of both mistrust and
trust emerge in the dialogue's final examination of courage. Protagoras claims
that while all of the other virtues are closely associated, courage is somehow
distinct, for "you will find many among humanity who are unjust, unholy,
licentious and ignorant, yet who stand out as being most courageous" (349
d7-9). Socrates, however, eventually compels Protagoras to agree that courage
can be reduced to knowledge, specifically a knowledge of the pleasurable or
painful consequences of action choices (356 dl-357 b4). A number of com-
mentators (Irwin 1977, 109-10; Nussbaum 1986, 106-7) see this apparent
reduction of virtue to craft knowledge as a serious moral theoretical claim.
However, Socrates' argument is compromised (in a way that is presumably
known to Plato) by its reliance on a crucial but illegitimate identification of
the pleasant (to hediston) with the noble (to kalon). From one perspective,
this part of the dialogue moves us closer to identifying virtue as a certain kind
of nontechnical rationality compatible with the enjoyment of higher plea-
sures.'9 Yet the problematic identification of the noble and the pleasant also
reveals the inadequacies of forms of trust generated by either individual self-
interest or communal devotion.
Socrates turns the examination of the relationship between courage and the
other virtues into a discussion of the human good. He eventually secures Pro-
tagoras' agreement that the good is the experience of pleasure and the absence
of pain (354 d9-e2), a standard that serves as the basis of both motivation and
ethical naming. A given action choice is rationally motivated if it aims at secur-
ing pleasurable and avoiding painful experiences. The commonly expressed view
that there can be base or bad pleasures and admirable (kalos) or good pains is
explained as a recognition that some momentary enjoyments lead to greater
pains (drinking to hangovers) while some momentary pains lead to greater plea-
sures (exercise to health) (353 cl-354 c5). This makes it much easier for Soc-
rates and Protagoras to agree on the preeminent value of "a kind of knowledge
which would save us," a comparative measuring of the units of pleasure or pain
19For representative statements of very different sorts see Coby (1987,157) and Weingartner
(1973, 121). My own view is that the rationality upon which virtue depends is not wisdom but
philosophy, an intellectual virtue that is partnered with a certain kind of moral virtue. For a further
development, see Mara 1997, 65-74.
838 Gerald M. Mara
likely to follow a particular action choice (357 a7-b7), a calculative science we
might call hedonics.
According to this broadly utilitarian psychology, all forms of ethical naming
(the good and the bad, the noble and the shameful) are tied to the contributions
that action choices make to enjoyments or sufferings (358 b6-9). Yet the con-
tinued use of cultural terms of valuation such as the noble or the shameful
reintroduces difficulties for the science of hedonics and for the understanding
of pleasure that accompanies it. While the hedonic calculus suggests that the
appropriate unit of analysis for measuring experiences of pleasure or pain is
the individual, the designations noble and shameful imply the presence and
importance of a community of naming with its own normative constraints on
individual practice.20 While Socrates had previously mentioned "the saving of
cities" (354 b5) as one of the attractive consequences of painful individual ex-
ertion (in the form of military training), the motivational psychology presumed
by the hedonic calculus discounts the legitimacy of any communal interest that
would threaten individual experiences of pleasure.
In spite of this, Socrates relies on the continued importance of such an ethi-
cal community in his attempt to argue that courage is really a form of knowl-
edge. Recognizing the general agreement that it is noble to endure the dangers
and the terrors of combat (359 e3-6), Socrates then claims that if such behav-
ior is noble, it must also be pleasant. Its pleasures are therefore measurable by
hedonics, and cowardice is not a failure of heart or spirit (thymos), but a mis-
take in calculation (logistike).
However, the adequacy of the argument depends upon the conversion of "the
pleasant is the noble" to "the noble is the pleasant" (359 e5-6; 360 a8-bl). The
logic of the conversion is undercut by the persistence of complications regard-
ing both units of analysis and units of hedonic measurement. In the first state-
ment "the pleasant" designates the felt satisfaction of the separate individual;
in the second, "the noble" identifies the normative priorities of an ethical com-
munity. If the first statement is an adequate account of motivation, any distinc-
tive priorities of ethical communities must be rejected. Under the second statement,
individual interests are now seen through the filter of cultural interests and
norms; affective trust merges into civic commitment. That these two claims
stand in such opposition, even though they are treated as convertible, is an
indication of the dangers and the inadequacies of both, for each position in-
volves a potentially serious form of instrumentalization that threatens the pos-
sibility of both moral choice and warranted political trust.2' If the individual
experience of pleasure sets the standard for the noble, political interaction be-
comes the aggressive pursuit of one's own material interests in a way that re-
20For a nice treatment of the complexities that the science of measurement unsuccessfully ob-
scures, see Coby (1987, 155).
21
For a fuller discussion of the role of this false conversion in the Protagor-as, see Mara 1988,
486.
jects the normative claims of any other individual or common good (Cleon).22
If cultural understandings of nobility shape all individual goods, then rational-
ity becomes the unhesitating pursuit of common purposes designed to further
the standing or reputation of the community (Pericles).23 The consequences of
either of these forms of politics for the development of warranted political trust
are devastating. In the first instance, the complete dominance of selfish inter-
ests necessitates the continued and ultimately paralyzing vigilance of both ver-
tical and horizontal forms of mistrust. In the second, representing the nobility
of civic devotion as the greatest source of personal gratification establishes a
misleading sense of communal trust that obscures political dangers and demon-
24
izes
political
criticisms.
In this light, the undermining of warranted trust seems traceable to mis-
taken understandings of the relationship between the noble and the pleasant
and ultimately to a reliance on problematic sources of knowledge about the
good. The reduction of the noble to the pleasant reflects the belief that we can
know the good simply by consulting our inclinations. The absorption of the
pleasant by the noble implies the validity of cultural or subcultural standards
for goodness. In the Protagoras, Socrates' response to both of these distor-
tions is not a grand theory that links appropriate understandings of pleasure
and nobility to a lucid knowledge of the good, but discursive philosophy as
practiced within Socrates' ironic discourse. Socrates' identification of the no-
ble with the pleasant is surely intended to undercut the self-satisfaction of the
attending elites, who see their own distinctive activities, focused on politics
and war, as setting the standard for nobility. In replacing this standard with a
pleasurable gratification enjoyable by anyone, Socrates effectively democra-
tizes conceptions of the noble. At the same time, Socrates' dissatisfaction with
22The most unsettling example of the noble reduced to the pleasant in Thucydides occurs during
the plague (2.52.2-4; 53.1-4) where the enjoyment of the grossest physical pleasures occurs amidst
putrefaction and decomposition. The continued need to identify to kalon indicates the simultaneous
presence of increasing social fragmentation and the persisting need to stay within some sort of
community of ethical naming.
23Near the end of the funeral speech, Pericles exhorts the members of the audience to "behold
the power of the city every day and become her lovers (erastas)" (2.43.1). Shortly, those memori-
alized are said to have been overcome by "unfelt" (anaisthe-tos) death (2.43.6). In a striking juxta-
position against the plague episode, individual physical experiences are redescribed in the context
of a cultural project that Pericles attempts to construct. The noble really sets the standard for the
pleasant.
24Monoson (1994, 253-76; 2000, Ch. 3) makes a strong case that Pericles' call for the audience
of the funeral speech to become Athens' lovers (erastai) aims at establishing reciprocity, not sub-
servience, between citizens and regime. It would surely be mistaken to see the Periclean project as
an effort to stimulate selfless absorption into some sort of holistic community. At the same time,
the sort of reciprocity at which Pericles aims requires individual citizens to reconceive their own
good as cultural recognition, rather than as personal security or even personal survival. Pericles'
rhetoric may also misrepresent the degree to which reciprocity between lover and beloved can be
reproduced in the relationship between citizen and regime. In a way, this parallels the illusion that
Periclean Athens was democratic in fact and not simply in name.
840 Gerald M. Mara
the argument that reduces noble courage to the calculation of pleasurable ex-
periences is reflected in the persistent doubt that virtue can be taught. Socra-
tes' alternative is to invite Protagoras to continue with him as they try again to
work through the question of virtue. In offering this invitation, Socrates indi-
cates that his own mode of discursive interaction combines elements of both
mistrust and trust.25 He mistrusts the immediacy of inclinations, the authori-
tative standing of cultural meanings, and even his and Protagoras' own previ-
ous agreements. Yet he also offers to trust Protagoras as a discourse partner in
the consideration of alternatives. Though Protagoras declines and the dialogue
ends, this unfulfilled partnership does provide some important insights regard-
ing the question of political trust.
Political Trust and Philosophical Mistrust
There are both analogies and discontinuities between the discursive philo-
sophical relationship proposed by Socrates and political, particularly demo-
cratic, trust. The first analogy clarifies the pragmatic context that makes political
trust both necessary and desirable. The practice of discursive philosophy sug-
gests that the need for trust is generated not simply by discrepancies in power
positions, as Protagoras implies, but by controversies over the good. The phil-
osophical interaction in the Protagoras has its political parallel in Diodotus'
insistences that what is good for Athens is not as obvious as Cleon says and
that discovering the good therefore requires serious investigation and thought.
Dissenting from the communitarian notion that trust presupposes substantial
agreement on conceptions of the good, both Plato and Thucydides imply that
trust is a political requirement precisely when agreement on the good is lack-
ing. Seeing the need for trust generated by disputes over the good also sug-
gests that the liberal contractarian approach, which treats collective action as
the common pursuit of previously identified goals, needs to appreciate that
the determination of the good is part of what collective action means. Conse-
quently, this perspective deepens and expands the definition of political trust
offered by deliberative democrats. The practical need to engage questions about
the good helps to explain why individuals are willing to place themselves
under the power of others if the resulting collective action will help contribute
to greater clarity. And since the stakes in disagreements over the good are so
high, we can more fully understand why power discrepancies are so troubling.
Finally, the central importance of engaging the good and bad aspects of polit-
ical purposes makes it questionable whether deliberative democratic theory
can offer constructive assessments of political deliberations without going be-
25This interpretation of Socratic discourse parallels Jan Patocka's assessment of Socrates' project
as the "constant shaking of the naive sense of meaningfulness [which] is itself a new mode of
meaning" (1996, 61). Patocka may, however, underemphasize the role that irony plays in Socrates'
constant shaking of meanings.
yond an attention to procedure to deal, in David Estlund's (1997) terms, with
correctness as well as with legitimacy. In connecting examinations of deliber-
ation and discourse with critical judgments concerning conceptions of the good,
both Socrates and Thucydides imply that political theory should enhance rather
than abstract from the substantive concerns of thoughtful citizens.
The second analogy between discursive philosophy and democratic politics
is that trust can be seen as one of the constitutive goods of a decent political
partnership. From this perspective, trust is neither simply an instrumental good
that furthers the achievement of individual or group aims nor an encompassing
good that reflects comfortable membership in a strong moral community. In-
stead, political trust, understood as the willingness to work with others to en-
gage controversial questions about collective actions and purposes, is one of
the goods that helps to constitute the value of a partnership of human beings
who share similarities but who also recognize the presence of differences. Po-
litical trust is thus an ongoing condition accompanying deliberative practices.
Consequently, the deliberative democratic position needs to be amended to al-
low it to discuss political trust in ways that Salkever (1991, Chapter 2) calls
teleological, conceptualizing trust as one of the benefits fostered by a demo-
cratic community that is functioning well.26 Far from ignoring differences within
complex societies, this teleological understanding of trust contributes to a more
discriminating assessment of democratic goods. In addition to being a consti-
tutive democratic good, political trust is related to a number of other societal
goods in noninstrumental ways. As an enabling good it contributes to mutuality
among different individuals and subcultures. As a reinforcing good it helps to
maintain equality, allowing individuals and subcultures to relate to one another
on terms of openness and fairness. And as a signaling good it points to the
presence of those virtues that make this society's members able to trust and be
trusted.27
This last function points to a third analogy between discursive philosophy
and the development of political trust within democracies. In order to flourish,
both require the presence of appropriate virtues, which each practice therefore
must strive to develop. Unlike Cleon, Protagoras clearly recognizes that stable
political communities require virtues that foster basic civility. Yet Protagoras
26AAn instructive contemporary illustration of how the absence of warranted trust can be treated
teleologically in this sense is provided by Constable and Valenzuela's analysis (1991) of the unrav-
eling of the fabric of civic trust in Chile under Pinochet.
27TThis teleological understanding of trust both expands upon and falls short of Jane Mans-
bridge's (1999, 290-309) conception of altruistic trust, under which one trusts more than the avail-
able evidence would warrant "as a gift, for both the good of other and the community" (1999, 290).
It expands upon this view by indicating that political trust, understood teleologically, can be con-
nected with other intrinsic goods of political communities. It falls short by not recommending a
trust that is more generous than evidence would warrant. If the pragmatic context of political trust
is a disagreement about the good, then the wisdom of altruistic trust is far less clear. Mansbridge
may move too easily from a description of moral interpersonal trust to politics.
842 Gerald M. Mara
sees these virtues as desirable for their contributions to political security. Pre-
cisely because they represent the basic qualities needed to hold societies to-
gether, he believes that it is easy to recognize what these virtues are. Socrates,
on the other hand, forces Protagoras to admit that recognizing the virtues is
difficult and controversial. He thus insists that the development of the virtues
is an integral, rather than simply a preliminary, concern of politics. Good pol-
itics provides education and not simply security. While Diodotus' express state-
ments despair of this possibility, his own practice in a way exemplifies it, and
Socrates chooses to side with his practice. This teleological investigation of the
conditions that further or frustrate the development of relevant political and
human virtues takes us beyond deliberative political institutions to broader and
deeper realms of cultural expectations, norms, and practices. An attention to
the virtues relevant to the creation of warranted political trust is not an alterna-
tive to focusing on political institutions and political culture but, rather, a more
complete elaboration of that focus. Attempts to avoid the appearance of a cer-
tain sort of moralizing, a position that unfairly associates any discussion of
virtue with antidemocratic political theory, may diminish the analytic resources
needed for a full consideration of the bases and outcomes of political trust.
Yet there are also incongruities between the role of trust within Socratic dis-
cursive philosophy and its place within democratic politics. While both prac-
tices rely on interactions between trust and mistrust, Socratic philosophy awards
a greater priority to mistrust than any politics possibly can. Socrates' philosoph-
ical project presupposes the unsettled (though not unsettleable) character of
agreements about the good and, thus, the need for revisiting these questions
repeatedly.28 Yet politics must presume some level of basic agreement about
shared values and must be conscious of the need to make conclusive deci-
sions.29 While commentators such as Brann (1978, 20-21) go too far in seeing
Socrates' fatal collision with Athens as emblematic of a fundamental opposi-
tion between philosophy and politics,30 there is clearly a sense in which Socra-
tes' continued questioning of shared meanings and agreed upon decisions works
against the inherent priorities of politics. For this reason, Socrates' inevitable
engagements with political questions are ironic. One of the many functions of
this form of irony is to oppose tendencies to convert Socratic discourse into a
political program (Alcibiades' project in the Symposium) or to consign Socratic
philosophy to political irrelevance (Callicles' project in the Gorgias). To be
sure, this sort of ironic discourse requires a differentiation of social institutions
28This signals intriguing connections between the Protagotas and the Laws. The nocturnal synod
practices its philosophical investigations in ways that recognize the need to keep them relevant for
yet separate from politics (951 d3-952 a6). It is also intriguing that the example of this sort of
philosophy that the Athenian stranger introduces is the relationship between the whole and the
parts of virtue (965 cl-e4).
29For a nice statement of the differences between discursive philosophy and democratic politics,
see Deneen (2000, 427).
30For a more extended discussion of Socrates' death sentence and the implications for the rela-
tionship between the democracy and philosophy see Mara 1997, 58.
analogous to those identified by deliberative democrats. Yet Socrates' ironic
discourse also complicates the perspective of deliberative democratic theory by
suggesting that its recommendations to balance political trust and mistrust through
institutional arrangements can never be altogether successful. The scope of in-
stitutional influence always falls short of encompassing discourses that are po-
litically relevant but ironically articulated, in part because ironic speech necessarily
falls both within and outside of all discursive spheres. Thus, Socratic irony
goes much further than deliberative democratic theory in raising questions about
its own premises. While deliberative democratic theory relies on the accepted
priorities of discourse ethics to generate a normative sociology that identifies
institutions conducive or damaging to deliberation, Socrates closes the Protag-
oras by restating his doubts about what many would see as the normative prem-
ise of Plato's political philosophy, the teachability of virtue.
Deliberative democratic theory's treatment of political trust is lacking in three
important ways: it ignores fundamental questions of the goodness of political
trust; it limits its focus to procedure at the expense of substance; and it is, at
best, ambiguous about the importance of virtue. The classical works of Thucy-
dides and Plato draw our attention to these weaknesses. While they do not
provide, together or separately, an alternative theoretical treatment of political
trust, much less an alternative theoretical treatment of democracy, they do offer
intersecting and diverging contributions that can help us appreciate the value of
deliberative democratic theory, even as we become conscious of the need to go
beyond it. For both Diodotus and Socrates, political trust is a constitutive good
of a community whose members are held together by need, yet potentially frag-
mented by differences over collective actions and choices. Trust in deliberative
institutions is warranted not simnply because their procedures function in cer-
tain ways, but because the undistorted functioning of such procedures promises
to generate certain kinds of substantive outcomes. And deliberative democra-
cies need to draw upon and foster virtues whose very presence represents a
substantive good of democratic life. The fact that both classical writers offer
these insights through representations of different forms of democratic engage-
ment does not confine them within premodern forms of political thinking. Rather,
it reminds us of the need to see political theory and political practice as con-
tinuous within the broader reflection on political life that should be common to
philosophers and citizens.
Manuscript submitted 12 January 2000
Final manuscript received 6 January 2001
References
Aristotle. 1971. Athenian Constitution, Euclemnian Ethics, Virtues and Vices. Trans. H. Rockham,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bellah, Robert, et al. 1985. Habits of the Heart. New York: Harper & Row.
Bohman, James, and William Rehg, eds. 1997. Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
844 Gerald M. Mara
Brann, Eva. 1978. "The Offense of Socrates." Interpretation 7(2): 1-21.
Coby, Patrick. 1987. Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell Univer-
sity Press.
Cohen, Joshua. 1997. "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy." In Deliberative Democracy, eds.
James Bohman and William Rehg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Constable, Pamela, and ArtLro Valenzuela. 1991. A Nation of Enemies. Chile iunder Pinochet. New
York: Norton.
Deneen, Patrick. 2000. "Chasing Plato." Political Theory 28(3): 421-39.
Elshtain, Jean Bethke, et al. 1998. A Call to Civil Society. New York: Institute for American Values.
Estlund, David. 1997. "Beyond Fairness and Deliberation: The Epistemic Dimension of Demo-
cratic Authority." In Deliberative Democracy, eds. James Bohman and William Rehg. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press.
Euben, J. Peter. 1990. The Trcagedy of Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Farrar, Cynthia. 1988. The Origins of Democratic Thinking. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Fukuyama, Francis. 1995. Trutst: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free
Press.
Habermas, Jurgen. 1984. The Theoty of Commnunicative Action, vol. 1. Trans. Thomas McCarthy.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Habermas, Jurgen. 1996. Betvveen Facts and Norms. Trans. William Rehg. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Hardin, Russell. 1999. "Do We Want Trust in Government?" In Democracy and Trulst, ed. Mark
Warren. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Irwin, Terence. 1977. Plato s Moral
Theory.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1979. Trutst and Power, eds. Tom Burns and Gianfranco Poggi. Trans. Howard
Davis, John Raffan, and Kathryn Rooney. London: John Wiley and Sons.
Mansbridge, Jane. 1999. "Trust as an Altruistic Move." In Democracy and Trulst, ed. Mark Warren.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Mara, Gerald. 1985. "After Virtue: Autonomy: Jurgen Habermas and Greek Political Theory." Jour-
nal of Politics 47(4): 1036-6 1.
Mara, Gerald. 1988. "Socrates and Liberal Toleration." Political Theoty 16(3): 468-95.
Mara, Gerald. 1993. "Cries, Eloquence and Judgment: Interpreting Political Voice in Democratic
Regimes." Polity 26(2): 155-87.
Mara, Gerald. 1997. Socrates' Discursive Democracy. Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press.
Monoson, Sara. 1994. "Citizens as Erastes: Erotic Imagery and the Idea of Reciprocity in the
Periclean Funeral Oration." Political Theory 22(2): 253-76.
Monoson Sara. 2000. Plato s Democratic Entanglements. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Nichols, Mary. 1987. Socrates and the Political Community. Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press.
Nussbaum, Martha. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ober, Josiah. 1989. Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ober, Josiah. 1998. Political Dissent in Democratic Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Offe, Claus. 1999. "How Can We Trust Our Fellow Citizens?" In Democracy and Trutst, ed. Mark
Warren. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Orwin, Clifford. 1984. "Democracy and Distrust." The Anerican Scholar 53(Summer): 313-25.
Orwin, Clifford. 1994. The Humanity of Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Patocka, Jan. 1996. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Trans. Erazim Kohak. Chicago:
Open Court.
Plato. 1914. Tiniaeus, Critias, Cleitophon, Menexenus, Epistles. Trans. R. G. Bury. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Plato. 1962. Laches, Protagoras, Meno, Euthydemus. Trans. W R. M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Plato. 1966.
Euthyphro, Apology, Cr-ito, Phaedo, Phaedruis. Trans. H.N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Plato. 1967. Lvsis, Symposium, Gorgias. Trans. W R. M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press.
Plato. 1968. The Repuiblic of Plato. Trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books.
Putnam, Robert. 1993. Making
Democracy Work. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rosenblumn, Nancy. 1998. The Morals of Membership. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Salkever, Stephen. 1991. Findinig the Mean. Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philoso-
phy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Saxonhouse, Arlene. 1996. Athenian Democracy: MAlodern MAlythinakers andAnicient Theorists. Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Saxonhouse, Arlene. 1998. "Democracy, Equality and Eide: A Radical View from Book 8 of Plato's
Repulblic." American Political Scienice Review 92(2): 273-83.
Schiappa, Edward. 1991. Protagoras and Logos. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
Strauss, Leo. 1963. The City and Man. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Thucydides. 1988. History of the Peloponnesian War. 4 Vols. Trans. Charles Forster Smith. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Thucydides. 1998. The Peloponnesiani Was: Trans. Steven Lattimore. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Warren, Mark. 1992. "Democratic Theory and Self Transformation." American Political Science
Review 86(1): 8-23.
Warren, Mark. 1999. "Democratic Theory and Trust." In Democracy} and Trulst, ed. Mark Warren.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Weingartner, Rudolph. 1973. The Uniity of the Platonic Dialoguie. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Wolfsdorf, David. 1998. "The Historical Reader of Plato's Protagoras." Classical Quarterly 48(i):
126-33.
Yack, Bernard. 1997. Thle Fetishism of AModerniities. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press.
Young, Iris Marion. 1997. "Difference as a Resource for Democratic Communication." In Deliber-
ative Demtiocracy, eds. James Bohman and William Rehg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gerald M. Mara is Executive Associate Dean and professorial lecturer in
government at Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057-1005.

Thucydides and Plato Democracy

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Thucydides and Plato Democracy

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Southern Political Science Association

Thucydides and Plato on Democracy and Trust

Вам также может понравиться