7/14/2007
Eric Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, vol. 3 - Order and History
The Republic, chap. 3, sec. 5.3 - sec., 6 – The Disintegration of Order, pp. 123-134
Joanne Tetlow, J.D., Ph.D.
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The cosmic cycle of order and disorder has reached its conclusion. Before his diversion after book four to the topics of women and family,
the philosopher-ruler, and education of the philosopher (books five, six, and seven respectively), Socrates picks up his original line of dialogue
with Glaucon about the best and worst states. Having asserted that the best polis is one of justice in the soul and society, Socrates provides
a classic articulation of how a healthy, ordered polis degenerates into a sick, disordered one. The decline goes as follows:
Timocracy
Oligarchy
Democracy
Tyranny
The explanation for this is anthropological not institutional. Man’s psyche is the force of the soul that fuels the degeneration. The analogy
in book seven shows the distinction between the intelligible realm of knowledge (episteme) with intelligence (noesis) and mathematical
reasoning (dianoia) as its parts, and the visible realm of opinion (doxa) with its components of belief (pistis) and illusion
(eikasia), both operating in the shadows and images of physical things. Thus, the rational element of the soul has both intelligible forms
and visible appearances. This is not the whole of man, however, as the model of the soul is tripartite: reason, spirit, and appetite. The
philosopher-ruler grasps the intelligible realm possessing knowledge, and thus keeps the other parts of his soul in order, that is, the spirited and
appetitive. This is the only perfect society, the only ordered polis, the only healthy, just political community. To show why justice is
better than injustice, Socrates analyzes the imperfect societies as the individual soul writ-large. The easiest way to see how a polis becomes
corrupt is to see how a man’s character becomes corrupt. And, the way to prove justice is better than injustice is to show how miserable and evil
the most degenerate soul is—that of the tyrant. Being the furtherest remove from the philosopher-king, the tyrant is the evil incarnate, a man who
soul is disordered to the maximum degree, and who is utterly and completely bad, and thus, unhappy. This decline occurs gradually, and so Plato
gives us gradations of measurement so that a sick soul and society can be diagnosis and treated before it becomes terminally ill.
Voegelin diagram’s this model of the polis:
stratum character
virtues (ordering powers)
archontes bouleutikon | sophia
| |
phylakes epikourikon | andreia |
sophrosyne | dikaiosyne
georgoi chrematistikon |
| |
The three classes of society: rulers, guardians, and workers correspond to the three characteristics of men in those classes: knowledge,
spirit, and physical. It is justice (dikaiosyne) as the highest virtue which orders the entire soul keeping the parts in proper
place. In short, reason governs passions with the middle part of spirit (sophrosyne) operating as a moderating force.
With this construct in mind, the ordering decline can be seen more clearly. The analysis of transition from timocracy to oligarchy to democracy
to tyranny is explained as the predominance of one part of the soul over the other. It is a perversion of order not disorder per se. Even the
tyrannical soul as evil has order to it, the problem is its utter perversion of the good. Essentially, the descent of the forms of imperfect
societies is caused by a metamorphosis of eros or passions. The timocratic man whose passion is spirited competition and courage transfers that
energy to the wrong object: money, becoming the oligarchic character whose one ambition is greedy gain, which then breaks apart into the anarchy
of the democratic man whose every whim and wish is fulfilled. That cannot last long—anarchy of the soul---is so unnatural that the tyrannical man
takes over with his master passion, a concentration of insatiable desire, because of its intensity rules all else—this is the addictive personality who
paradoxically loses all freedom and becomes a slave despite his apparent strength and control.
Why is any of this important? the immortality of the soul. That which is divine, eternal, and immutable is that which is crucial in politics
and society and as such is the measure of the best polis. Ending with the Pamphylian myth of eternal rewards and punishments for man’s choices
of what kind of soul he will engender, Plato brings to fruition his original claim that justice is better than injustice; and thus, politics has a
transcendent nature far beyond conventional notions.
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