Thornton's Chapter 5: "The Birth of Political Man"

This chapter more than any preceding chapter has positive resounding claims to make about the importance and vitality of the Greek tradition. By that I mean that Thornton identifies specific ideas that have had tremendous positive influence and can indisputably be traced back to the Greeks. We look to all Greek city-states to some extent, but preeminently Athens is the polis we look to in political terms when considering the legacy of Greece.

Of the many claims Thornton has for the uniqueness of Greece, it might be a good idea to keep clear if possible the following two phenomena: 1) things which were unique in ancient times to Greece, and 2) things which exist in both the ancient Greek and the modern world which can be plausibly connected in such a way that it makes sense to give the Greeks credit (or blame) for them. When a phenomenon is both 1 and 2, then the Greeks offer a particularly worthwhile object of study and can reasonably be given a great deal of the credit (or blame) for the phenomenon. A phenomenon might be only 2, but that still makes it part of the Greek legacy: it need not be the case that Greece alone thought of something in order for us to give credit to Greece for it. Thornton is not always careful to keep the two apart, nor am I, but Thornton tries hard to do so.

Thornton begins by pointing out a wonder of the world which we take for granted and which even bores some of us: the peaceful tranfer of the highest office in the world from one president to the next, not to mention the peaceful transfer of many other offices of heads of states and lesser offices throughout the Western world from one individual to the next, whether that individual is in the opposing party or not. When we look at the Athenians versus the Persians, we see Athenians almost yearly exchanging one person for another peacefully in many offices, and sometimes the two involved are enemies, whereas in Persia, we see bloody successions that take place on the death of the supreme King. What is more, all other offices depend on that King. On the other hand, civil strife was common in Greece, and Athens was not immune, and so the transfer of power occasionally became messy in Athens too (when there was a revolution or a change imposed from outside: not while the democracy was intact and running). Even if the Athenians occasionally were troubled by a more messy transfer of power, however, it remains important to realize that they institutionalized the transfer of power and it worked well and often in Athens. That institutionalization of the transfer is the key to this part of the tradition which we can attribute to the Greeks.

Another idea that the Greeks started which we take for granted is consensual government: the idea that the machinery of government, including the courts, the laws, the executives, all belong to the people as a whole. That idea was found nowhere else in the ancient Mediterranean and is clearly central to our modern idea of democracy (the extent to which it is/was a reality can be debated).

A further Greek idea is that power should reside not in individuals but in the laws and institutions of the state itself: the individuals are mere temporary executors of a structure that is supposed to be permanent. The claim is not that non-Greek states had constantly changing structures, but rather that the Greeks, and in particular the Athenians recognized explicitly and took measures to enhance the idea that law was the ruler, not the individual. This concept of the "rule of law" seems fundamental to a fair society.

As Aristotle put it: being actively involved in one's state made one fully human. He said that because he believed that humans are by nature political. Not having any say in politics, being disenfranchised, for Aristotle at least, is to be missing a whole area of one's humanity.

How did the Greeks get to the point where they could form a democracy in Athens and other forms of government that rejected the idea of one supreme ruler and instead favored consensual government? Thornton, with good evidence, says that the creation of a "middle" class was the key. That middle class was neither rich enough to strive for autocratic rule nor poor enough to tolerate having no share of power. And it was large enough that giving it power did not amount to an oligarchy. The Greeks' systems lasted because they also formed the military might to defend it: the hoplites. The hoplites too were "middle" men.

Among the recurring thoughts in Greek literature that contributed to the way Greek states developed was a distrust of excessive wealth and power. Solon and Hesiod both suggest that wealth and power corrupt inevitably and lead to hybris. Solon tried to set up a system wherein the rich were allowed to have their wealth, but constrained in their power while the poor were given certain basics of freedom to allow them to live contented lives. Solon also pointed out that a plutocracy (rule of the wealthy) is a bad idea, because good men are often poor while bad men can be rich.

Thornton points out that that in just about every other society that did not follow in the Greeks' footsteps it was "takne for granted that aristocratic and wealthy elites ruled their societies in order to further their own power and privilege." That may be exaggerated, but that the Greeks' legacy includes the idea that wealth and power need to be constrained by societal institutions is clear enough and important.

The idea of a middle class is also very important for Greek thought and how Greece actually developed historically as well. Just so, today in the US, there is quite a bit of concern about the status of the middle class.

The Greeks clearly realized that putting power in individual humans' hands was not a safe procedure, no matter how good and wise those individuals are, because the next individuals may not be so good and wise, and those individuals themselves might become corrupted. Instead of individuals, in Athens at least, the law and the offices themselves were held to be supreme.

We would do well to keep in mind that the prevailing paradigm throughout the Mediterranean, and among the wealthy and powerful Greeks too, was that nobility was a matter of birthright. Being born to the right parents was supposed to be sufficient to make one good and fit to rule. Furthermore, "democracy," which the Greeks called isonomia ("equal/fair laws"), was a radical innovation that rejected that idea of nobility. That all humans should be governed by the same laws applied equally to all was a Greek idea. The thought is seeminly simple to say and think, but it is of tremendous significance. The innovation of an easily-read alphabet was part of what made the idea practical: laws could be published on public inscriptions, and they were in Greece. Law and custom were the means by which the Greeks thought to contain destructive tendencies in humans.

Of course, only one in ten people who resided in Athens was a citizen, and so "democracy" in Athens was anything but democratic. And yet, the ideology of democracy is that the people have the power, and the way that democracy came to the fore in Athens was by a series of changes that expanded the power of the "people" and also expanded in many cases the body of people who counted as the "people." Our own system is but a logical extension of some of the same principles: that part of what it means to be human is to be politically active, that the laws should apply equally to all citizens, that government is by consent of the governed.

Among the important principles of Athenian democracy which Thornton identifies are:
  1. Social class does not determine whether one is competent to participate in public business of the state.
  2. Freedom is to be protected and institutionalized: freedom of speech, action, and thought.
  3. The military should be the concern of the citizen-soldiers, not of power elites.
  4. Decisions about public policy should result from open and careful deliberation. Debate makes for better decisions. Reason should lead to persuasion.
  5. Persuasion is better than compulsion or coercion.
  6. Equality of citizens before the law is the best guarantor of justice.

Among the important criticisms of democracy which the ancient Greeks made are the following:
In sum, whether you think that democracy is good or bad, real or a sham, the Greeks were there first and thought about many of the very same issues which we are still grappling with. The quality of their thought was high because in Athens they forged a system that fostered open intellectual inquiry and they were well aware that they were doing so.