Polytropy

I continue to review and revise some notes I made during a recent reading of Plato’s Republic. The reading was with a group of people on four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America), meeting weekly, by means of Zoom, from June, 2022, till May, 2023; I joined only in August.

My last post included a summary in some detail of Books I–VII, with a terser summary of the remaining Books VIII–X. I asked what Plato hoped to accomplish with the Republic, because if he meant to inspire dictators, he seemed to have succeeded with Ruhollah Mostafavi Musavi (a.k.a. Ruhollah Khomeini, 1900–89), Saloth Sâr (a.k.a. Pol Pot, 1925–98), and the like. But then is Plato to be blamed if such men did not pay attention to Books VIII and IX, where even the best state is shown to devolve into tyranny?

Here I look at a passage in Book IX that struck me when I read it in Robin Waterfield’s 1998 translation in the Oxford World’s Classics edition. This is at 572e–3a, in the account of how the son of the democratic father becomes tyrannical:

When these black magicians, these creators of dictators, realize that there’s only one way they’re going to gain control of the young man, they arrange matters until they implant in him a particular lust, to champion the rest of his desires which are too idle to do more than share out anything that readily comes their way. And don’t you think this kind of lust is exactly like a great, winged drone?

Waterfield is interpreting, but justifiably, I think. I’ll look at the Greek later, along with a number of other translations.

Meanwhile, the passage has me thinking that desire is not normally able to satisfy itself. It is a barnacle or anemone, sitting and waiting for nutriment to come to it.

I recall the physician described by Socrates in Book I (342d): he seeks only the advantage of the patient. For his own advantage, the physician needs an additional art, of money-making.

I don’t really know how there can be such an art, but apparently there are people who do practice it, and Warren Buffett is the premier example of today.

Most desires seek nothing, in the strict sense; they can only wait for it to come to them. For satisfaction, they need something else: the champion in the passage above. That is the danger of the dictator: he possesses, or is possessed of, a desire that is able to work for its own satisfaction.

Does that sound right? It’s what I get from Waterfield’s translation. However, Waterfield himself doesn’t get it; for in his note on 575d, he says,

Plato … now tries to equate the dictatorial type with an actual political dictator, which is an illegitimate and unconvincing shift. Any dictator who was utterly controlled by lust would be incapable of ruling and thus of deserving the name ‘dictator’ … I think we have to conclude that, as usual in Republic, he [Plato] is less interested in external politics than in psychology.

Although Waterfield doesn’t refer to it, he may have in mind what Socrates observes in Book I (352d, in Waterfield’s own translation):

people who are rotten through and through and are perfectly immoral are perfectly incapable of doing anything either.

The dictator is incapable of rule in the strict sense. I recall what Thrasymachus says, earlier in Book I (340e):

no ruler makes a mistake at precisely the time when he is ruling.

Thrasymachus tries to argue that it is a mistake to serve anything but your own lust; however, he loses the argument.

As another name for the tyranny, Plato might have coined “kakistocracy.” Apparently he didn’t, perhaps because the second element of the word would suggest some kind of rule, and in the tyranny there is nothing deserving of that name. What is done by the dictator, the tyrant, the autocrat, is not rule, but a counterfeit of rule. Here I use the terminology of R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) in his earliest published work that I know of, “The Devil” (1916):

The essence of evil, then, is that it should set itself up not in opposition, open and proclaimed, to good as good; but that it should set itself up to be the good … Evil is not the absence of good nor yet the opposite of good; it is the counterfeit of good.

By Collingwood’s account then, there will be some kind of rule in every society on earth, or even in hell:

… nobody can be entirely and deliberately bad. To be enslaved by a counterfeit of goodness we must know goodness itself … Therefore the Devil, just as he cannot will all the evil there is, cannot be fundamentally and perfectly wicked; he is not a wicked angel but a fallen angel … It is this contradiction in the nature of the evil will that Dante has in mind when, coming to the centre and heart of the Inferno, he finds its lord not triumphant, not proud and happy in his kingdom, but inconsolably wretched.

Con sci occhi piangeva, e per tre menti
Gocciava ’l pianto e sanguinosa bava. *

* Inferno, c. xxxiv. lines 53–4. “With six eyes he wept, and down three chins trickled his tears and blood-stained slaver.” Stained, that is, with the blood of the traitors whose limbs he was mangling …

The tyrant does satisfy some desires, at least for a while, until resources are used up, as Socrates describes, starting in 573d:

‘I think he proceeds to give himself over to feasting and revelry, parties and prostitutes, and all the activities which typically indicate that the dictator lust has taken up residence within a person and is in complete control of his mind.’

‘Yes, that’s bound to happen,’ he [Adeimantus] agreed.

‘Every day and every night, terrible desires with prodigious appetites branch out in large numbers from the main stem, don’t they?’

‘Yes, they do.’

‘So his income is soon exhausted.’

‘Of course.’

‘And then he starts borrowing and working his way through his estate.’

‘Naturally.’

‘And when there’s nothing left, his young brood of desires is bound to clamour long and loud. He’s driven by the stinging swarm of his desires (and especially by lust, the captain of the bodyguard the others form) to run amok—to see if there’s anyone he can steal anything from by deceit or by force.’

Compare what Gönül Tol says in “Turkey’s Weak Strongman” (Foreign Policy, March 1, 2023):

In a brilliant book, Timothy Frye tells us that strongmen are not as strong as we all think. Being an autocrat is no easy feat. Autocratic leaders, particularly in personalist autocracies such as Turkey’s, face trade-offs. They mobilize support by promising to get things done, but the things they must do to build their one-person rule end up undermining their capacity to deliver on that promise. One of the first things strongmen do when they centralize power is weaken institutions. But weak institutions make it difficult for them to govern, which eventually undermines their strongman rule.

It thus seems to me Socrates is indeed addressing a political problem, and not only a psychological problem.

The Greek

Here’s is my suggestion of a phrase-by-phrase translation of the passage I started with, the Greek text being taken from Perseus:

I have followed Waterfield in using “lust” for erôs.

I am also translating magoi literally, like Shorey, who perceives an allusion to the conspiracy of two Persian magi recounted in Herodotus III.61:

Now after Cambyses, son of Cyrus, had lost his mind, while he was still in Egypt, two Magus brothers rebelled against him. One of them had been left by Cambyses as steward of his house; this man now revolted from him, perceiving that the death of Smerdis was kept secret, and that few knew of it, most believing him to be still alive. Therefore he plotted to gain the royal power: he had a brother, his partner, as I said, in rebellion; this brother was in appearance very like Cyrus’ son Smerdis, whom Cambyses, his brother, had killed; nor was he like him in appearance only, but he bore the same name too, Smerdis. Patizeithes the Magus persuaded this man that he would manage everything for him; he brought his brother and set him on the royal throne; then he sent heralds to all parts, one of whom was to go to Egypt and proclaim to the army that henceforth they must obey not Cambyses but Smerdis, the son of Cyrus.

More Translations

Here are some other translations of the Republican passage. Perhaps none of them quite have Waterfield’s take, as I understand it, but Lindsay and Bloom come closest. Bloom says generally that Shorey and Lindsay are the best, and Lindsay “probably the more useful.” Love, passion, and desire are all used for erôs; nobody else has Waterfield’s lust (though Shorey uses it in the plural where others have desires or appetites).

Spens (1763):

But when thoſe curious magicians and tyrant-makers have no hopes of retaining the youth in their power in any other way, they contrive to excite in him a certain love which preſides over the indolent desires, and ſuch as miniſter readily to their pleaſures a certain winged and large drone; or do you imagine that the love of theſe things is any thing elſe?

Sydenham (1808):

But when thoſe dire magicians and tyrant-makers have no hopes of retaining the youth in their power any other way, they contrive to excite in him a certain love which preſides over the indolent deſires, and ſuch as miniſter readily to their pleaſures, which love is a certain winged and large drone; or do you think that the love of theſe things is any thing elſe?

Jowett (1892):

As soon as these dire magicians and tyrant-makers find that they are losing their hold on him, they contrive to implant in him a master passion, to be lord over his idle and spendthrift lusts—a sort of monstrous winged drone—that is the only image which will adequately describe him.

Lindsay (1923):

When these terrible magicians and tyrant-makers have given up hope of securing their hold on the young man in any other way, they contrive to implant within him a love that shall preside over the idle desires which consume whatever is given them—some winged and mighty drone. Do you think love in such men could be anything else?

Shorey (1935):

And when these dread magi and king-makers come to realize that they have no hope of controlling the youth in any other way, they contrive to engender in his soul a ruling passion to be the protector of his idle and prodigal appetites, a monstrous winged drone. Or do you think the spirit of desire in such men is aught else?

Bloom (1968):

And when they [“dread enchanters and tyrant-makers”] have no hope of getting hold of the young man in any other way, they contrive to implant some love in him—a great winged drone—to be the leader of the idle desires that insist on all available resources being distributed to them. Or do you suppose that love in such men is anything other than a winged drone?

Reeve (2004):

And when these terrible enchanters and tyrant-makers have no hope of keeping hold of the young man in any other way, they contrive to implant a powerful passion in him as the popular leader of those idle and profligate appetites—a sort-of great, winged drone. Or do you think passion is ever anything else in such people?