Popper on Justice in Plato (Prof. Bailly's summary of Popper
Chapter 6)
There are several ways to approach the topics of justice and the state
and their relation.
Popper suggests that the proper way is a technological one: first,
determine rational goals, then determine what technology will lead to
those goals.
Another way to approach the matter is to ask what justice and the
state are essentially. What is their definition and essence. That is
Plato's approach. Be sure to be aware that Plato is not seeking a
dictionary definition. He is seeking an account which identifies the
proper character of something that actually exists, that has an
essence. He seems to assume that justice is such a thing: it actually
exists and has an essence. It is not a human construct, in other words.
Plato, in his discussion of "justice," may be talking about
something that no one else would call "justice." If Plato is doing so,
then he is blameworthy, because he is misleading (Dahl and Irwin are
two scholars who pursue this point).
Popper offers 5 traits of "justice" that he thinks most of us will
agree to (I quote him from P.89):
- an equal distribution of the burden of citizenship, i.e. of those
limitations of freedom which are necessary in social life;
- equal treatment of the citizens before the law, provided, of
course, that;
- the laws show neither favor nor disfavour towards individual
citizens or groups or classes;
- impartiality of the courts of justice; and
- an equal share in the advantages (and not only in the burden)
which membership of the state may offer to its citizens.
We might consider these the "rational goals" that Popper talked about
at the start of the chapter.
Popper further asserts that this idea of justice was not foreign to
Greece. "Equalitarian" justice was, in fact, the popular notion of
justice in Athens, and was the target of Plato's attack, although he
did not take it on directly. The idea of equality before the law is
seen in Pericles' funeral speech and had a technical name in Greek, isonomia.
Popper asserts that Plato thought justice was "that which is in the
interest of the best state...to arrest all change, by the maintenance
of a rigid class division and class rule." Popper further asserts that
Plato's state and the principles which it embodies are identical with
totalitarianism. Popper identifies 5 principles upon which Plato bases
the best state (P87: the following is quoted selectively):
- The strict division of the classes
- the
identification of the fate of the state with that of the ruling class;
the exclusive interest in this class, and in its unity; and subservient
to this unity, the rigid rules for breeding and educating this class,
and the strict supervision and collectivization of the interests of its
members.
- the ruling class has a monopoly of things like military
virtues and training...but it is excluded from any participation in
economic activities, and especially from earning money.
- There must be a censorship of all intellectual activities
of the ruling class, and a continual propaganda aiming at moulding and
unifying their minds. All innovation in education, legislation, and
religion must be prevented or suppressed.
- The state must be self-sufficient. It must aim at economic
autarchy: for otherwise the rulers would either be dependent upon
traders, or become traders themselves. The first of these alternatives
would undermine their power, the second their unity and the stability
of the state.
Popper observes, correctly, that for Plato justice in a
state is a quality of the whole state rather than of any individual in
it, or even a relationship between some individuals. For Plato, justice
is
harmony among the classes and belongs to the whole state.
By way of contrasting Plato's justice with equalitarian justice,
Popper creates the following list (quoted from P. 94: ae, be, and ce
are the equalitarian side, ap, bp, and cp are the Platonic
counterparts)
- A
- (E) the equalitarian
principle proper, i.e. the proposal to eliminate 'natural' privileges
(and other irrelevant criteria for privilege)
- (P) the principle of
natural privileges
- B
- (E) the general
principle of individualism
- (P) the general
principle of holism or collectivism
- C
- (E) the principle that
it should be the task and purpose of the state to protect the freedom
of its citizens.
- (P)
the principle that it should be the task and the purpose of the
individual to maintain, and to strengthen, the stability of the state.
A(E) means that birth,
abilities, wealth,
connection, etc. should not influence the administration of the laws.
Pericles says in Thuc. "our laws afford equal justice to all alike in
their private disputes, but we do not ignore the claims of excellence.
When a citizen distinguishes himself, he is then preferred to the
public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as a reward for
merit."
Both A(E) and A(P)
can be defended by assertions about "nature." Plato claimed that humans
are not equal by nature, and so should be treated in proportion to
their qualities, not all alike. Things should also be expected from
them in proportion to their qualities. Popper maintains that Plato also
used a psychological appeal to human pride in that he suggested to his
readers that they were superior to the average human. A(P)
is found in Plato's formulation that justice consists in everyone
sticking to their own task. "to keep and to practise what belongs to us
and is our own will be generally agreed upon to be justice," says
Socrates.
Popper thinks that B(E) and B(P)
need to be further examined. "Individualism"
in particular can mean two
things: 1) the opposite of collectivism, and 2) the opposite of
altruism. Collectivism is the demand that the individual should
subserve the interests of the whole. Popper asserts that 1) and 2) are
two distinct things, but Plato has conflated them. In other words,
Popper claims that Plato says that we should not be individualist,
because that is the same thing as being selfish (individualism as the
opposite of altruism). Next Plato says that in order to avoid
selfishness, we must be collectivist (collectivism as the opposite of
individualism). With that logic, Plato has argued that we should
subserve the interests of the individual to those of the state. If
Popper is right about Plato and about the argument, then Plato is
guilty of a hugely important error. Namely, he has ignored the fact
that one can be individualist without being selfish, and so his
conclusion that we should be collectivist is not justified. It is clear
that Plato thought that the individual exists for the sake of the state
and not the other way around.
Popper's central claim about Plato and justice is that Plato has
made a tremendous mistake. Plato has, namely, failed to acknowledge
that one can be individualist and yet an altruist.
If we look to the first two books of the Republic, we find
in Glaucon's challenge some confirmation of Popper's assessment.
Glaucon's challenge and the choice of
lives argue or assume that people
are inherently selfish if given the chance. Popper does not so
much
argue that people are inherently altruistic as rail against Plato for
claiming that the only choices are to be selfish or collectivist.
Popper claims that individualism (the
non-selfish kind) is what is
championed in Pericles' funeral oration, and what leads to the
breakdown of tribalism and the rise of democracy in Athens. He thinks
that individualism united with altruism is the basis of western
civilization (P. 102). He cites Kant's principle "always recognize that
human individuals are ends, and do not use them as mere means to your
ends."
In the Republic,
Plato has, according to Popper, done all that
he can to eradicate individualism. Property, children, and
spouses are
held in common. Each person should be thoroughly accustomed to obeying
orders from superiors and should have no initiative.
Popper also claims that within
Plato's works, we can find a strain
of thought that is individualistic. It is an earlier strain of thought
that is more Socratic than Platonic. In the Gorgias for
instance, there is the notorious claim that it is better to suffer
injustice than to do it. That claim is, says Popper, altruistic and
individualistic. By contrast,
says Popper, in the Republic,
injustice is not something done to an individual, but to the state.
Sure, killing someone is unjust, but it is unjust because it injures
the state, not because it harms an individual (even though it
necessarily does so).
Popper claims that Plato has pulled a sleight of hand in the Republic,
where individualism is identified with the moral nihilism of
Thrasymachus. Fighting against Thrasymachus is clearly a good thing,
and insofar as Thrasymachus represents individualism, fighting against
individualism is thus also a good thing.
In defining justice in the Republic, we find the following
passage (Popper annoyingly never gives the page number):
We have three classes in our city, and
I take it that any such plotting
or changing from one class to another is a great crime against the
city, and may rightly be denounced as the utmost wickedness?"
Assuredly.
But you will certainly declare that
utmost wickedness towards one's own
city is injustice?
Certainly.
Then this is injustice. And
conversely, we shall say that when each
class in the city attends to its own business, the money-earning class
as well as the auxiliaries and the guardians, then this will be
justice.
That passage is a clear statement of what injustice is and so is
central in the definition of what justice and injustice
are in the Republic.
Popper notes that injustice amounts to any change or violation of the
caste system, anything that harms the city, and anything opposite to
those things is justice. That code is
strictly utilitarian: morality is
simply whatever is in the state's interest. An aside that might
interest the political scientists in class: here Popper says that he is
explicitly
arguing against Hegel's explicit recognition of the amorality of the
state and nihilism in international relations.
In contrast to Plato's totalitarian
justice, Popper suggests that
Lycophron presented a theory of humanitarian
justice.
We do not have any treatise of Lycophron's, but we have what others
said
about him. Popper's presentation of humanitarian justice is as follows.
We should start from the question
"what do we demand from the
state? what is its legitimate aim? why do we prefer to live in a
well-ordered state than an anarchy?" The humanitarian reply is that we
demand protection from the state, protection from ourselves and others,
protection from aggression. Popper asserts that in order to
protect
certain freedoms of the individual, the state curtails some freedoms,
but that does not lead to an arbitrary situation where the question
"Which freedoms?" can only be answered arbitrarily. Popper thinks the
prior question "What do we demand from the state?" sets the stage, and
the subsequent problem is one of technology (i.e. the technology that
is the state can provide what we want, but not all of it, and it will
interfere with some of it). That such a thing is possible, Popper
claims, is demonstrated by the existence of democracies that do it.
Important traits of the humanitarian theory are that it does not
assume any particular historical origin of the state, it does not
assume anything about human nature or the nature of the state, and it
does not make any claims about "natural" rights to freedom.
Two typical objections arise to the
humanitarian theory, according
to Popper. They are that the state is something greater than the
individuals in it and that the state is a moral agent that should be
concerned with the morality of its parts. The first one amounts to a
demand that the state be worshipped, according to Popper. He does not
take the first seriously, because he finds it so clearly distasteful.
The second objection, he says, amounts to
relieving individuals of their moral responsibility. If the state is to
dictate morality, then the individual need not decide what is moral (an
example of this is the tendency to think that as long as it is legal,
it is all right to do it: think of recent business scandals). Popper
says that politics should be held to moral standards, not the other way
around.
Popper maintains that the humanitarian
theory of justice is presented
by Glaucon in book II of the Republic.
But, he claims, the theory is presented in historicist form as a
theory
of the origin of justice. Lycophron, however, from what Popper can
tell, did not formulate it as a historicist doctrine that assumed a
particular origin of justice. What is more, the humanitarian theory is
presented by Glaucon "as if its logical premises were necessarily
selfish and even nihilistic; i.e. as if the protectionist view of the
state was upheld only by those who would like to inflict injustice, but
are too weak to do so, and who therefore demand that the strong should
not do so either; a presentation which is certainly not fair, since the
only necessary premise of the theory is the demand that crime, or
injustice, should be suppressed." (P116).
Glaucon presents his theory as a challenge to Socrates, but also as a
reformulation of Thrasymachus' theory. Glaucon,
says Popper, at several
points claims that protectionism is logically based on the idea that
injustice is preferable if one can get away with it. Popper says that
Plato does not treat of any theory of protectionism of the individual
that does not rest on moral nihilism. In other words, Plato has
ignored
a rival theory of justice. Popper acknowledges that the theory he
likes, which he calls humanitarianism, protectionism, and
individualism, rests on an assumption: namely, he assumes that
injustice is evil. (there is a potentially huge problem here: does
Popper assume that he knows what injustice and justice are in order to
"prove" what justice is? probably not: maybe he could claim that by
"injustice is evil," he means "things that are ordinarily considered
unjust, like stealing, fraud, murder, assault, etc., also happen to be
evil").