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Did the Greeks Invent Democracy?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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The Greeks invented the words “city,” “democracy,” “people,” “oligarchy,” “liberty,” “citizen.” It is therefore tempting to suppose that they invented the eternal truth of politics, or of our politics, with only one exception: slavery is the major difference between their democracy and democracy as such. For there must exist an eternal politics about which it is possible to philosophize instead of simply writing history. Therein, across the ages, could be found the central essence of politics; despite their diversity, political regimes would have a functional analogy to one another which could be represented in a variety of ways: establishing justice, making men live in peace with one another, defending the group, exercising a domination of the master class over the forces of production.
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- Copyright © 1983 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 C. Nicolet, Le métier de citoyen dans la Rome républicaine, N.R.F. 1976.
2 Ch. Meier, Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980, p. 255.
3 Thucydides, II, 40, 2; cf. Meier, p. 248 ff. That which Meier calls the "political identity" of a society is the same thing as what we are here calling presuppositions or "discourse" (in Foucault's sense). On politicization, pp. 289-292.
4 Xenophon, Memorabilia, I, 2, 41.
5 On the Law, see a wonderful page in Ehrenberg, L'Etat grec, p. 164.
6 Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, 4, 2.
7 C. Meier, op. cit., Entstehung, p. 151, 216 with note 196, 42 ff, 86, 213.
8 H. Rehm, Geschichte der Staatsrechtswissenschaft, p. 78.
9 For the gubernator or pilot was at the same time the captain of the ship, as Jean Rougé has shown in Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra, vol. 3, p. 174.
10 The metaphor of politician as gubernator has been studied by C.M. Moschetti, Gubernare rem publicam. Contributo alla storia del diritto marittimo e del diritto pubblico romano, Milano Giuffrè, 1966.
11 Thus Plato, The Republic, 488 A, and Aristotle, Politics, 1276 B 20.
12 Tricot's note on Politics, 1286 B 20.
13 On the method, see Oswald Ducrot, Dire et ne pas dire, 2nd ed., p. 13: "It is possible to seek in any text the implicit reflection of the profound beliefs of the period; by this is meant that the text is consistent only if it is complemented by these beliefs. And this is true even if it is known that it is not offered as an affirmation of them."
14 Plato, Laws, 758 A 5; "A city is governed and directed through the swell of other cities;" Polybius, VI, 44.
15 Aristotle, Politics, 1254 B 30 and 1333 A 30; Xenophon, Memorabilia, II, 1, 6.
16 P. Vidal-Naquet, Le chasseur noir, Maspero, 198 1, p. 149; C. Meier, Entsteh ung, op. cit., pp. 66, with regard to Aristotle, Politics, 1297 B 20.
17 C. Meier, "Clisthène et le problème politique de la polis grecque", in Revue internationale des droits de l'antiquité, XX, 1973, p. 115-159.
18 One either belongs or does not belong to the city; some feel themselves "excluded from the city" (Laws, 768 B) and suffer from this.
19 So much so that even beggars and slaves were entitled as citizens, exclaimed the Athenian Theramenes (Xenophon, Hellenica, II, 3, 48). This text does not indicate the slightest hesitation with regard to slavery. To the contrary, Theramenes attempts to make his adversary sense how ridiculous extreme democracy is and he uses a hyperbole which his adversary himself found hyperbolic. It is as if we were to elect children who have barely reached the age of reason or give citizenship to plowing oxen. It is evident that no one had ever dreamt of opening the city to slaves, nor even to foreigners!
20 Cf. Veyne, Le pain et le Cirque, p. 205-207.
21 M. Defourny, Aristotle, Etudes sur la "Politique," Paris, 1932, p. 383.
22 See especially Laws, 704 A-C; 707 E-708 D; 735 E-737 B; 744 BC.
23 Laws, 806 DE.
24 Aristotle, Politics, 1328 B 35; the word arete is better translated by "quality" than by "virtue" which beclouds the nuance and makes many pagan texts unintellig ible. "Virtue" opposes moral value alone to other advantages, true or false; "quali ty" designates both virtue and the ennobling title of a "man of quality." To be rich was a quality.
25 The problem of the devalorization of "work" in antiquity is not a simple one. This devalorization varied according to social classes, as De Robertis had no difficulty in showing. This variation itself can be explained by four variables: (1) what was work in the eyes of the ancients, i.e., the fact of being dependent on another or on things is not what we mean by work; (2) the place of work in the ancient definition of a social individual is not the same as in our own times; a noble shipbuilder was noble and not a shipbuilder (he simply built ships); a non-noble shipbuilder, on the other hand, was defined as a shipbuilder, for the lesser people were defined by their professions; this is why work was highly esteemed among the lower classes; (3) a case by itself was the very special devalorization of trade and manual crafts; (4) although a notable was not defined by his economic activities, he was still proud of being skillful in business or in agriculture; this was an appreciated talent, another quality. As for the superstition which valorized agriculture and devalorized trade and crafts, see the pleasant arguments with which Xenophon attempts to razionalize this valorization of agriculture (Economics, IV, 2 and V, 4). On the double attitude of the Greeks and of Plato toward the crafts, on the hesitation between two models ("the political sector separates what the technical sector unites") see P. Vidal-Naquet, Le chasseur noir, p. 289: "Etude d'une ambiguïté: les artisans dans la cité platonicienne."
26 Laws, 806 D and 808 B.
27 A. Guillemin, Le pouvoir et l'innovation; les notables de la Manche et le développement de l'agriculture, 1830-1875, Centre de sociologie rurale, 1980, vol. I, pp. 251-257. As M. Godelier has written somewhere (I quote from memory), "the intentional rationality of economic behavior is not an absolute but depends on the hierarchy of social relations."
28 It was to be similar later in Rome where the artes liberales did not retain their liberal character unless they were exercised by a free man; when exercised by a slave or an emancipated person they were in no way liberal. After the works by De Robertis and D. Nörr, see also J. Christes, Bildung und Gesellschaft: die Einschät zung der Bildung und ihrer Vermittler in der Antike, Darmstadt, 1975.
29 This was a proverb (Aristotle, Politics, 1334 A 20).
30 Laws, 846 D; more generally the Laws are a program which engulfs the rich in a kind of civic contemplative life where they have no leisure time to become involved in their money matters.
31 Christes, op. cit., p. 25: "The disdain for work came from the ideal of political life: he who must earn his living does not have the leisure to fulfill his vocation to be a man of politics." Euripides, Suppliant Women, 419: the herald of an oligarchi cal city declares, "Even if a poor peasant is not ignorant, his work will prevent him from looking after communal affairs."
32 For Plato see the end of this article; for Aristotle, Politics, 1286 B 13.
33 Said by Pericles in Thucydides, II, XL, 2.
34 Aristotle, Politics, 1318 B 10 and 1319 A 30; cf. Polybius, IV, 73, 7-8.
35 On distributive justice in politics, see Laws, 744 BC and 757 B-E; Aristotle, Politics, 1280 A 10, 1282 B 20, 1301 A 25; Nicomachean Ethics, 1131 A 25; Isocrates; Areopagiticus, 21.
36 As for saying that ideology serves as justification in the eyes of others, this is a functional and finalist supposition which the facts disprove (one can sing one's own praises because of arrogance or defiance; one can affirm one's strength instead of justifying oneself; often ideology is not read or known but by its own beneficiaries; one can also be silent and persist in one's arrogance, etc.).
37 Those who are subject to power can react against it in the form of anger and revolt; they can also "overcompensate" for it by affirming the superiority of humility and the eminent dignity of the humble who will have their reward when the last will become the first.
38 Cf. Le pain et le Cirque, p. 117, which develops an idea of Robert Dahl.
39 On freedom as the right to have one's say, see Meier, Entstehung, op. cit., p. 294 and in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe by Brunner, Conze and Koselleck, vol. II, p. 427, s.v. "Freiheit." Isegoria is the right to state one's opinion in politics without having to remain silent and allow the powerful alone the right to speak. Parresia is the right to candor in political speaking, or the courage to have such candor, without fear of the powerful.
40 Meier, Entstehung, op. cit., p. 259.
41 Entstehung, p. 256.
42 Laws, 768 B.
43 Aristophanes, Wasps, 575.
44 Ion, or book VIII, in which Thucydides speaks in his own name, gives a different tone than the Suppliant Women or the speech of Pericles in book II of Thucydides.
45 Aristophanes, Knights, 1111-1150.
46 On the Crown, 10 and 256-258.
47 Or at the least such barely existed. There was a real sense of civic solidarity which led to monetary loans between citizens as a form of fraternal conduct which did not interfere with property rights. From Isocrates to Cicero this brotherly conduct is highly vaunted. There also (Isocrates, Areopagiticus, 44; Aristophanes, Plutus) were praises of work (farming as well as trade). "Persons of a lower condition were, in the past, directed toward agriculture and trade, for it was recognized that indigence is born of laziness and that criminality arises from indigence" (Isocrates). Rather than asking what the Athenians thought of work, it would be better to ask what they thought of workers. They looked down on them because they were socially inferior. Work, nevertheless, was not a bad thing. It was good for the little people, even if not so for the privileged classes.
48 It was with Aristotle that citizenship ceased being a function and became a status instead. There then existed the governed as opposed to the governors. See C. Mossé, "Citoyens actifs et citoyens passifs dans les cités grecques: une approche théorique du problème", in Revue des études anciennes, LXXXI, 1979, p. 241. Even during the century-and-a-half of democracy, Athens had its clan of oligarchs who remained on the sidelines and watched the deeds of democracy. "What would the people become without us?" they said often (Pseudo-Xenophon, The Athenian Republic); "Have nothing in common with those people" (Theophrastus, Char acters, XXVI, "The Oligarch," 3). It is clear how special this attitude is. These oligarchs felt themselves to be foreigners in Athens. This is understandable; Hellenic patriotism was group patriotism, that of a concrete group. One was either in the democratic group or one remained aloof. But the city and the civic body were the same thing and so it was not possible to think of an eternal Athens existing beyond the deviation of democracy, like Action Française serving eternal France and hating the Republic, or De Gaulle preferring France to the French people. Alcibiades' career is a good example of this patriotism of a concrete group. Athens is the Athenians, that is the men with whom Alcibiades quarreled in favor of another city, and with whom he then made up. This takes place between one man and other men. After the defeat of Athens in 405, the oligarchs had the city's ramparts torn down to the sound of flutes as for a festival. They did not feel involved in the defeat of an eternal Athens; they cast their lot with the rival group.
49 Aristotle, Politics, 1283 A 14 and passim.
50 Politics, 1280 A 25 and 1316 B 1; see also 1328 B 37-1329 A 3. The rich have the obligation to serve the city; they are its slaves, says Isocrates (Areopagiticus, 26).
51 Appian, Civil Wars, 1, 7-9,26-37.
52 Economie et société, French tr., Plon, 1971, vol. I, p. 298.
53 It would be tempting to contrast Plato's attitude with the universalism of the Stoics who conferred the status of citizen on the poor and the slave. Still the reasons for this universalism must be examined. It arises less from a consideration of the poor and the slave as such than from a wariness of wealth, as of every false advantage which does not ensure security, autarky. The rich and the powerful can be ruined or be reduced to slavery. They do not have autarky against these acts of fate unless they learn to scorn wealth and freedom. In short, the true subjects of Stoic universalism are the privileged.
54 According to his Seventh Letter, 334 BC, the strength of a city comes from its civic corps, namely elderly citizens of noble birth with a large fortune.
55 Laws, 831 C. The idle and hard-working greedy are described in The Republic as kinds of obsessed and inhibited puritans who think only of amassing and saving.
56 Laws, 846 D.
57 Laws, 847 D.
58 Aristotle, Politics, 1327 A 30, a text which we translated in our own manner in Annales E.S.C., 1979, p. 230 and n. 70. In this article we attempted to show that there was a strange contrast between the ideal of autarky and its realities which were hardly autarkic. We were unable to explain this contrast. This was because we had not understood the extent in the ancient subconscious of that submerged continent which we have termed, for better or for worse, the presupposition of militancy. The autarkic ideal, the theoretical prohibition of trade and international commerce, are a part of this continent. The reality was much different. See, for example, L. Gemet, L'approvisionnement d'Athènes en blé, p. 375 ff.
59 For Solon see his fragment 3, verses 5-10. On the emptiness of the theme of the decadence of Roman morals at the end of the Republic, see F. Hampl, Das Problem des "Sittenverfalls", in Historische Zeitschrift, 1959, p. 497.
60 Laws, 678 BC.
61 See note 31.
62 An excess of wealth makes it difficult to submit to reason and public authority (Aristotle, Politics, 1295 B 5-20); only poverty can create restraint while wealth produces indiscipline (Isocrates, Areopagiticus, 4). For the ancients, to be rich meant to think that one could do whatever one wished (this is the double meaning of luxuria in Latin).
63 Plato, Aristotle, Polybius (VI, 57).
64 Polybius, VI, 9 and 57. Just as humanity subsists, after each period of decadence everything begins anew and constitutions evolve in cycles.
65 See an essential page of the Laws, 875 A-D.
66 Man is made to suffer; it is dangerous if he lets himself go (Laws, 779 A). The lack of self-control is the source of all lack of discipline and of every excess (734 B). Only self-control allows triumphing over pleasures (840 C). Political life is always opposed to pleasure.
67 Georg Jellinek, Allgemeine Staatslehre, 3rd ed., 1921, p. 307.
68 Adolf Menzel, Hellenika, Vienna, 1938, p. 59.
69 Isocrates, Areopagiticus, 39-41.
70 Aristotle, Politics, 1288 B 20, Tricot transl.
71 On the legal basis for the accusation against Socrates of having corrupted youth, see Menzel, p. 26. In my opinion we must suppose that corruption was judged not from its material effects (the acts of youths qualified as corrupt), but from the content of instruction. Corruption was thus what we would call an opinion violation (but this expression would have had no meaning for a Greek).
72 "Socrates does not honor the same gods as the city." For theous nomizein, see Menzel, p. 17, and W. Fahr, "Theous nomizein," zum Probleme der Anfänge des Atheismus bei den Griechen, Hildesheim, 1969, which shows, p. 156, that Plato changed the meaning of this expression to conform to his own religious views. For the Greeks, religion was defined not by the criterion of a profession of faith in which one confessed "belief" in the gods, but from cultic practices. It is clear that the practice supposed belief, just as action supposes intention.
73 Athenaeus, XIII, 566 F. That is Hyperides, fr. 138 Kenyon.
74 Isocrates, Areopagiticus, 49. In Rome the "good" emperors, enemies of licence, forbade inn-keepers to sell food.
75 One of Solon's laws prescribed etimy for those who squandered their patri mony (Diogenes Laërtius, I, 55). The censors of Rome manifested the same severity toward the knights, who, as public figures, were made (as were Greek citizens theoretically) to follow a stricter morality. See Quintilian, VI, 3, 44 and 74. Abderus punished the philosopher Democritus for having squandered his patrimony (Athen aeus, 168 B).
76 Athenaeus, IV, 167 E-168 A and 168 EF. A Roman knight responded similarly to the reproaches of a censor, "I thought my patrimony belonged to me" (Quinti lian).
77 Aristotle, Politics, 1919 B 30.
78 Plato, Crito, 50 AB.
79 Arostotle, Rhetoric, I, 4, 1360 A 19; cf. Politics, 1310 A 35: "to live in obedience to the constitution is not slavery but, on the contrary, salvation" (for the city, and citizens with it); Plato, Laws, 715 D.
80 Aristotle, Politics, 1310 A 30 and 1317 B 10; Isocrates, Areopagiticus, 37 and 20 (cf. Politics, 1290 A 25); Plato, The Republic, 557 B.
81 Immorality is either a direct threat to the city or a disturbing symptom. In the absence of public surveillance, morals become corrupt (Isocrates, Areopagiticus, 47); when each person does only as he pleases it is a sign that the city is disintegrating and that the citizens are as independent from one another as cities themselves are from one another (Aristotle, Politics, 1280 B 5). In antiquity the recurring theme of current disorders in morality was due to a quite natural illusion. Politics was conceived as nothing less than a control over every instant, whether this control came from the moral sense of each one, formed by education, or whether it came from public authority. However, it was confirmed that unfortunately such control hardly existed. The conclusion was that people surely were taking advantage of this to act badly. The theme of decadence in reality masked the irreality of the ideal.
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