socrates' politics
Athenian democracy was in many ways more fully par- ticipatory than the mixed political systems of most modern western societies. Democracy was not combined with repub- licanism or monarchy, as in the US and the UK. It was not a representative democracy: citizens voted directly for impor- tant decisions, rather than delegating their authority to a senator or an MP.
Athens was not, in a strict sense, a 'radical democracy': not all ultimate authority lay with the people, since the law- courts (dikasteria) also had significant powers. Some scholars argue that the courts, not the popular assembly, should be seen as the 'ultimate sovreign' in Athens. But authority for much important city business did lie with the Assembly (the ekklesia), a gathering of at least 6000 people, composed from all qualified adult male citizens. Among other things, the Assembly had control of all foreign policy decisions.
For the daily running of government business, there had to be smaller executive groups. The Council of the Five Hundred was selected by lot every year and subdivided in turn into ten smaller groups (the Ten Tribes established by Cleisthenes), so that at any one time most political decisions were taken by a set of fifty citizens (the prytaneis). Out of this fifty, another lottery selected a single man as leader - an office that would last only a day or so and could be held just once.
From a democratic perspective, the system of random selection had some important advantages. It ensured that, in so far as the lottery was fair, anybody could take on a position of huge political importance, regardless of money or birth.
Athens was not, of course, a society untouched by social divisions. There were slaves, women were rarely allowed outside the house, and resident aliens - even free-born males - had significantly fewer rights than Athenian citizens. Some citizens were much richer than others. Some were aristocrats, others peasants. Military rank, especially in wartime, took on great political significance: charismatic generals won the people's hearts and votes.
But the degree of equality between members of the adult male citizen population was remarkable by modern stand- ards. Even those who could not run a long, expensive elec- tion campaign could still become governors of the city. If the US switched over to random selection for the presidency and the senate, it would no longer be a disadvantage if a candidate was too ugly for television, gay, black, Hispanic, female, non-Ivy League-educated or poor.
But from Socrates' perspective, the practice of selecting officials by lot was problematic, because it took no account of a person's competence for the job. One of Socrates' core beliefs was that in order to do something well, you have to know how to do it. He objected, then, to the idea that no specific qualification or competence was required of those chosen to rule the city. Socrates thought that every person should do the job they were most suited to do. Those who knew how to govern should govern.
Not all modern scholars agree that we should see Socratic philosophy as essentially anti-democratic. It is possible to argue that Socrates would have favoured democracy over other political systems - even if he had specific objections to Athenian democratic practice. If we remember that Socrates doubted whether 'human wisdom' could exist at all, it seems possible that he would have thought nobody was truly qual- ified for government. None of us knows anything of any value, least of all how to run a city.
Socrates probably did not favour any conventional form of government that had been realised in his time, be it oli- garchy, monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy or democracy. But in so far as he cast doubt on election by lot and on election by the (uninformed) citizen body, and in so far as he questioned the people's power to recognise their own best interests, it is easy to see how his philosophy might have seemed dan- gerous for the democracy, to those outside his own intimate circle. As we shall see, contemporaries suspected Socrates of sympathising with oligarchs and aristocrats.
authority and submission
Socrates' attitude towards authority is one of the most complex and hotly disputed aspects of his political thought. He insisted on the importance of submission to one's supe- riors, at certain times. He himself fought for the city of Athens in no fewer than three military campaigns during the Peloponnesian War. He believed that a soldier in war ought to obey his military commander.
But at home in Athens, Socrates sat on only one council and he had not set foot in a courtroom as a litigant before the day of his own trial. Socrates had a different vision of his political obligations from that of most of his contemporaries. He believed that he could best serve the city not by sitting on committees or talking in the assembly, but by doing exactly as he did: by walking the streets of Athens, talking and think- ing about the good life. He redefined 'politics' so that he, not the politicians, was the most truly political member of the community. 'I am one of the few Athenians - not to say the only one - who undertake the real political craft and practice of politics', he declared (according to Plato in the Gorgias).
Socrates made some important interventions in the conventionally-defined political life of the city. One such moment happened after an Athenian naval victory towards the end of the war. The Athenians won the battle (at Arginusae in 406 bc), but afterwards twenty-five ships were wrecked in a storm. The ten generals in charge of the expedition failed to recover the bodies of the dead or rescue the wounded. The knowledge that the bodies of all those Athenians were lying without honour in the sea was horrible for a society that placed enormous importance on the proper burial of the dead (as evidenced by, for example, Sophocles' Antigone).
When the survivors returned, it was proposed that the ten generals responsible should be executed en masse, and that they should not be allowed to defend themselves individu- ally. This was illegal under Athenian law, which required that anybody charged with a capital offence should have an individual hearing. It was also - of course - unjust, regard- less of the guilt or innocence of the prisoners. The right of prisoners to a proper hearing has been a key tenet of almost all democratic or semi-democratic governments in western history (only recently violated, in America, in the case of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners). This happened to be the one moment in Socrates' life in which he was sitting on the council. He spoke out against the arrangement, and contin- ued to vote against it, even when all the other members of his tribe, which then held the chairmanship, were swayed by the general will.
Again, during the rule of the Thirty Tyrants in 404 bc, Socrates showed considerable personal courage in refus- ing to submit to political authority. A member of the militia tried to make Socrates bring a man called Leon of Salamis to them to be killed. The Thirty would then have succeeded in killing off one prominent citizen, Leon, and making another, Socrates himself, accessory to his murder. But Socrates refused. He would not do something he believed to be wrong simply because a government leader or an authorita- tive political group told him to do it. This is the clearest case in Socrates' biography of civil disobedience: he refused to obey the injunction of a ruling government because he knew it was wrong.
We might, however, want to criticise Socrates for not doing more - in fact, for not doing anything. He did not taint his own hands in Leon's murder. But he also did nothing to stop it, either by warning Leon, or by confronting the Thirty directly. Socrates' sense of his own integrity was probably more important to him than any issues of social justice.