Philosophy of mixed government
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The Philosophy of mixed government or classical republics by W. Lindsay Wheeler
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The philosophy of mixed government prescribes the necessary principles for the proper understanding and formation of classical republics. Classical republics are a very inticrate and sophisticated forms of government. They are delicate and can be easily subverted. Not only are they creatures of high intelligence, it takes much learning, wisdom and forbearance to operate one. Moreover, this is not an "-ism" or an ideology.
Since there was a much more intellectual basis for the development of republics in Classical Greece, the following is based on the historical Dorian (Cretan and Spartan) experience. This examination can be said to be a reconstitution of their Doric philosophy undergirding their system of government.
Contents |
The Spartan Republic
Trifunctionality
The Cretans and Spartans, being the most warlike of the tribes of the Greeks and very family oriented, seem to base their idea of mixed government on the tripartite form exhibited in both military and family institutions. Both of these institutions are of one body but composed of three different classes or persons; the family is one but is made up of three persons, the husband, the wife and the children. Hierarchy is throughout nature; to the classical mind, societies are no different.
Aristocracy is an important and indispensible element for mixed government. The word aristocracy is the combination of two Greek words: 'Aristos' means "the best" and 'kratos' means "power". Kratos is the same ending as in the word "democracy". Aristocracy or mid-level management is needed and present in every human institution. An example of this is the military; between the top commander and the regular soldier is an intermediate body called the non-commissioned officers. The non-commissioned officers are soldiers who are given positions of leadership due to merit and worth; in other words, an aristocracy. Intermediate bodies are necessary in every human institution such as already mentioned; the armies; factories, between the plant manager and the workers there is the foremen; hospitals, between the doctor and the patient there is the nurses; churches, between the bishop and the laity there are the priests and deacons; etc. The aristocracy is the seat of wisdom, prudence and experience and in all these institutions the backbone of those organizations.
Δικαίος
δικαίος (justce in Latin; righteousness in English) was the central philosophical tenet underlying the Doric republics. Plato's famous dialogue, The Republic, which is modeled on the Cretan and Spartan polities is centered on the discussion and meaning of righteousness. It is an important element in the operation of trifunctionality and the classical republic.
As Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle observed nature, they discerned that things are apportioned to do one thing and one thing alone. Man, they said, could do only one thing expertly and rightly. (Or be a professional at one thing alone.) Particular things are fitted to certain jobs; function follows form.
Justice is when each social class fulfills its function without overstepping its boundaries. To the royality is assigned the leadership role; to the aristocracy, the seat of wisdom and education, the position of counsel; to the pious and holy, the religious duties to God and man; to the warriors, the job of soldiering; to the business/merchant class, the manufacture and retailing of goods; to the slaves/serfs/helots, food production and menial labor.
Each class is fitted for a particular line of work and the rule of righteousness/justice demands that each estate or caste stays within its own field of expertise and not usurp anothers function and purpose. Ευνομιά (well-orderedness) is achieved and each caste reaches the arete (excellence) of its field by its constant practice. 100,107
This Doric process and system of seperation and segregation was called διoικίσμoς. It is opposed to the egalitarian principle underlying the formation of the Greek democracies; a process called synœcism.
Distinctions of rank
An important concommitmant of dikaios and in the operation of tri-functionality is the concept of "distinctions of rank". This concept can be viewed and is very much prevalent in highly developed successful military organizations such as the Spartan and Roman armies. From privates, to the general, each rank has a "distinction of rank". It consists of "a thing carried", or a mark on the clothing, or differences of clothing or headgear. There is something signifying the rank of the individual within the organizational structure.
In classical republics, just like its militaries, each citizen class was required to wear a specific form of clothing and headgear. In Sparta, the helots, the perioeci, the Dorian Spartiates (similars), the Dorian aristocracy and royalty all wore distinctive clothing to signify their position. 114 Furthermore, differences in clothing was also mandated between old and young. Distincitions of rank is a necessary concomitmant of social distance within the classical republics.
In Athens, the home of democracy, the opposite was the course. There was an "uniformity of dress". The psuedo-Xenophon records that at Athens one couldn't tell slave from free, for they all looked the same.112. Prof. Karl Otfried Müller notes that, "...democracy likes a large mass, and hates all divisions."113
Golden Mean
Plato argued that "Persia and Athens show the fundamental elements of all political life exaggerated as far as possible in one direction and the other (the one monarchical, the other democratic)...the merit of Sparta is that she has been trying to blend them, and has therefore maintained herself for a long time." 30 A republic is really the Golden Mean between the extremes of democracy and Asian monarchical despotism. Consequently, a republic is basically formed around the middle class in cooperation with the upper classes. 73 Again, the middle class is the "golden mean" between the lower and upper classes.
Mentality between republic and democracy
Aristotle does not use the word democracy and republic interchangeably; neither does Socrates in Plato's Republic.
Aristotle defines a republic as the rule of law. "...it is preferable for the law to rule rather than any one of the citizens, and according to this same principle, even if it be better for certain men to govern, they must be appointed as guardians of the laws and in subordination to them;... the law shall govern seems to recommend that God and reason alone shall govern..." 21 Thomas Jefferson beseeched his countrymen to "bind men down from mischief by the chains of the constitution". 61
A democracy's mentality is that the people are sovereign and have become a law unto themselves wherefore the phrase vox populi, vox dei. The mentality of Despotism, as it can be seen in the Asian kings of the Pharoahs, Babylonians and Persians, Alexander the Great, his successors and the Roman Emperors starting with Julius Caesar, is that the king or Emperor makes the law so he is God. For the Spartan mindset, the Law, the golden mean, is to rule not men collectively or singly as the Spartan King advises Xerxes at the Battle of Thermopylae, to wit, "The point is that although they're free, they're not entirely free; their master is the law, and they're far more afraid of this than your men are of you. At any rate, they do whatever the law commands...". 38 A man's obedience, loyalty, and fidelity lie in the law and not in persons; the Spartan mindset being, "I'm obedient to the law but under no man". 64
Aristotle notices that a democracy puts the people above the law: "men ambitious of office by acting as popular leaders bring things to the point of the people's being sovereign even over the laws." 22
When the law loses respect, Aristotle says in V vii 7 that "constitutional government turns into a democracy". And in that situation, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle fear the possibility that "Tyranny, then arises from no other form of government than democracy." Then, democracies are no more than ochlocracies. In more recent times, Huey Long said that when fascism came to the United States it would call itself "democracy". 23 See The Kyklos.
Culture of virtue
Werner Jaeger argues that Socrates and Plato believed that "A state is never power alone, but the spiritual structure of the man whom it represents". 31 The forms of government are physical manifestations of the spiritual condition of the state, which Socrates and Plato saw through the principle of Macrocosm/microcosm. Socrates observed that the "character of the individual passes into the state". 65 As a republic is the golden mean, so it is that it's individuals must also be in possession of the golden mean; ones that have balance, harmony and symmetry. It is virtuous individuals that make up a republic; virtue being, as Aristotle describes it, as the "golden mean" between the extremes of excess and deficiency in character. Virtue along with religion and piety was the paramount characteristics of Doric Crete, Sparta, Early Republican Rome, Victorian England and Colonial America. In the understanding of this principle, the Spartans endeavored greatly in the education of youth because the virtue of obedience (in Greek, dikaiosyne) and other virtues is only gained in the habitual practice thereof. Like the iron they beat into their weapons, they beat their boys into manhood in order to perpetrate their government by law. (q.v. Culture defines politics)
Love of Wealth
Socrates observed that
- "...the love of Wealth and the spirit of moderation cannot exist together in citizens of the same State to any considerable extent;..." 122
Born out of the spirit of moderation, classical republics rely on virtue. On the other hand, business and retailing, the pursuing of wealth, breeds πλεονεξια. The passion for self-aggrandizement and lust knows no moderation; never knowing satisfaction. As Aristotle notes, "...for appetite is in its nature unlimited,..." 135 Socrates cognizant of this paradigm and Doric principles recognized that "Where money is prized, virtue is despised." Commercialism undermines and overrides a virtuous society.
In order to preserve their warrior society, a society of virtue, it became incumbent to segregate and deny merchants, retailers and manufacturers, the banausos, political influence or rights in the Doric communities and on the other hand, the citizens of the Doric commonwealths were denied the possibility of possessing money or huge amounts of it.
Another way that the Kyklos operates in mixed governments is when the love of wealth becomes the overriding goal. Not only do mixed governments convert into democracies but as the love of wealth becomes paramount, class warfare surfaces and the chaos gives rise to tyranny. The Roman Republic, due to excessive commercialism, descended into civil war, creating political chaos which led the way for Julius Caesar to cross the Rubicon with his legions, seize power; thus inaugarating the Roman Empire. (This action confirms the paradigm of the kyklos set out by Socrates.)
Agrarianism
(original research and conclusions) Socrates considered that one can not know anything until he first has a concept of it. Agrarianism and/or living in nature provides the concept of the Rule of Law and hardens men so that they can obey.
To the Doric Greeks, nature is full of laws and is run by laws. If one breaks the laws in nature, usually, it is injurious or fatal. Nature has to be obeyed; for example, the time for planting and harvesting are set. Things in nature have to be done in their season. Subconsciously, obedience, humility, and respect is nurtured in men. The concept of the rule of law is then planted in the minds and hearts of men.
Secondly, agrarianism hardens men. In Plato's Republic, Socrates reiterate the Doric saying, "The Good comes thru the Hard". The Good, and hence the Law is hard for it requires things which are difficult and demanding. Only hardened men can respond to the dictates of the law. Effeminacy undermines the rule of law.
Though the Spartans were not strict agrarianists per se, they spent most of their time in the mountains and in nature. The boys were taken out of their families and villages and raised in the mountains surrounding their homeland. They lived in nature and by a consequence with it where stiffened to it.
Contrarily, urbanization divorces men from nature; from true reality. Men in urban environments lose the concept of the rule of law and of moderation. Law then becomes fickle and easily debased; the basis of the law becomes man himself.
See also
- Society as an organism
- Classical republics and democracy contrasted
- Pecking order What an agrarian would know.
Miscellania
- In relation to the trifunctionality concept, Aristotle's favorite number was three. In his studies of ethics, he divided virtue into three parts; excess, the golden mean, and the deficiency where virtue is the golden mean and vices are the excess or deficiency of human character. In his studies of the soul, he divided the soul into three parts; the Nutritive Soul (plants, animals and humans), the Perceptive Soul (animals and humans) and the Rational Soul (humans only).
