The habit of writing against the government had, of itself, an unfavorable effect on the character. For whoever was in the habit of writing against the government was in the habit of breaking the law; and the habit of breaking even an unreasonable law tends to make men altogether lawless… .
From the day on which the emancipation of our literature was accomplished, the purification of our literature began… . During a hundred and sixty years the liberty of our press has been constantly becoming more and more entire; and during those hundred and sixty years the restraint imposed on writers by the general feeling of readers has been constantly becoming more and more strict. … At this day foreigners, who dare not print a word reflecting on the government under which they live, are at a loss to understand how it happens that the freest press in Europe is the most prudish.
MACAULAY
INTRODUCTION
It is proper that I should indicate my reasons for submitting this detailed analysis of a forgotten dialogue on tyranny to the consideration of political scientists.
Tyranny is a danger coeval with political life. The analysis of tyranny is therefore as old as political science itself. The analysis of tyranny that was made by the first political scientists was so clear, so comprehensive, and so unforgettably expressed that it was remembered and understood by generations which did not have any direct experience of actual tyranny. On the other hand, when we were brought face to face with tyranny—with a kind of tyranny that surpassed the boldest imagination of the most powerful thinkers of the past—our political science failed to recognize it. It is not surprising then that many of our contemporaries, disappointed or repelled by present-day analyses of present-day tyranny, were relieved when they rediscovered the pages in which Plato and other classical thinkers seemed to have interpreted for us the horrors of the twentieth century. What is surprising is that the renewed general interest in authentic interpretation of the phenomenon of tyranny did not lead to renewed interest, general or scholarly, in the only writing of the classical period which is explicitly devoted to the discussion of tyranny and its implications, and to nothing else, and which has never been subjected to comprehensive analysis: Xenophon’s Hiero.
Not much observation and reflection is needed to realize that there is an essential difference between the tyranny analyzed by the classics and that of our age. In contradistinction to classical tyranny, present-day tyranny has at its disposal “technology” as well as “ideologies”; more generally expressed, it presupposes the existence of “science,” i.e., of a particular interpretation, or kind, of science. Conversely, classical tyranny, unlike modern tyranny, was confronted, actually or potentially, by a science which was not meant to be applied to “the conquest of nature” or to be popularized and diffused. But in noting this one implicitly grants that one cannot understand modern tyranny in its specific character before one has understood the elementary and in a sense natural form of tyranny which is premodern tyranny. This basic stratum of modern tyranny remains, for all practical purposes, unintelligible to us if we do not have recourse to the political science of the classics.
It is no accident that present-day political science has failed to grasp tyranny as what it really is. Our political science is haunted by the belief that “value judgments” are inadmissible in scientific considerations, and to call a regime tyrannical clearly amounts to pronouncing a “value judgment.” The political scientist who accepts this view of science will speak of the mass-state, of dictatorship, of totalitarianism, of authoritarianism, and so on, and as a citizen he may wholeheartedly condemn these things; but as a political scientist he is forced to reject the notion of tyranny as “mythical.” One cannot overcome this limitation without reflecting on the basis, or the origin, of present-day political science. Present-day political science often traces its origin to Machiavelli. There is truth in this contention. To say nothing of broader considerations, Machiavelli’s Prince (as distinguished from his Discourses on Livy) is characterized by the deliberate indifference to the distinction between king and tyrant; the Prince presupposes the tacit rejection of that traditional distinction.1 Machiavelli was fully aware that by conceiving the view expounded in the Prince he was breaking away from the whole tradition of political science; or, to apply to the Prince an expression which he uses when speaking of his Discourses, that he was taking a road which had not yet been followed by anyone.2 To understand the basic premise of present-day political science, one would have to understand the meaning of the epoch-making change effected by Machiavelli; for that change consisted in the discovery of the continent on which all specifically modern political thought, and hence especially present-day political science, is at home.
It is precisely when trying to bring to light the deepest roots of modern political thought that one will find it to be very useful, not to say indispensable, to devote some attention to the Hiero. One cannot understand the meaning of Machiavelli’s achievement if one does not confront his teaching with the traditional teaching he rejects. As regards the Prince in particular, which is deservedly his most famous work, one has to confront its teaching with that of the traditional mirrors of princes. But in doing this one must beware of the temptation to try to be wiser, or rather more learned, than Machiavelli wants his readers to be, by attaching undue importance to medieval and early modern mirrors of princes which Machiavelli never stoops to mention by name. Instead one should concentrate on the only mirror of princes to which he emphatically refers and which is, as one would expect, the classic and the fountainhead of this whole genre: Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus.3 This work has never been studied by modern historians with even a small fraction of the care and concentration it merits and which is needed if it is to disclose its meaning. The Education of Cyrus may be said to be devoted to the perfect king in contradistinction to the tyrant, whereas the Prince is characterized by the deliberate disregard of the difference between king and tyrant. There is only one earlier work on tyranny to which Machiavelli emphatically refers: Xenophon’s Hiero.4 The analysis of the Hiero leads to the conclusion that the teaching of that dialogue comes as near to the teaching of the Prince as the teaching of any Socratic could possibly come. By confronting the teaching of the Prince with that transmitted through the Hiero, one can grasp most clearly the subtlest and indeed the decisive difference between Socratic political science and Machiavellian political science. If it is true that all premodern political science rests on the foundations laid by Socrates, whereas all specifically modern political science rests on the foundations laid by Machiavelli, one may also say that the Hiero marks the point of closest contact between premodern and modern political science.5
As regards the manner in which I have treated my subject, I have been mindful that there are two opposed ways in which one can study the thought of the past. Many present-day scholars start from the historicist assumption, namely, that all human thought is “historical” or that the foundations of human thought are laid by specific experiences which are not, as a matter of principle, coeval with human thought as such. Yet there is a fatal disproportion betwen historicism and true historical understanding. The goal of the historian of thought is to understand the thought of the past “as it really has been,” i.e., to understand it as exactly as possible as it was actually understood by its authors. But the historicist approaches the thought of the past on the basis of the historicist assumption which was wholly alien to the thought of the past. He is therefore compelled to attempt to understand the thought of the past better than it understood itself before he has understood it exactly as it understood itself. In one way or the other, his presentation will be a questionable mixture of interpretation and critique. It is the beginning of historical understanding, its necessary and, one is tempted to add, its sufficient condition that one realizes the problematic character of historicism. For one cannot realize it without becoming seriously interested in an impartial confrontation of the historicist approach that prevails today with the nonhistoricist approach of the past. And such a confrontation in its turn requires that the nonhistoricist thought of the past be understood on its own terms, and not in the way in which it presents itself within the horizon of historicism.
In accordance with this principle, I have tried to understand Xenophon’s thought as exactly as I could. I have not tried to relate his thought to his “historical situation” because this is not the natural way of reading the work of a wise man; and, in addition, Xenophon never indicated that he wanted to be understood that way. I assumed that Xenophon, being an able writer, gave us to the best of his powers the information required for understanding his work. I have relied therefore as much as possible on what he himself says, directly or indirectly, and as little as possible on extraneous information, to say nothing of modern hypotheses. Distrustful of all conventions, however trivial, which are likely to do harm to matters of importance, I went so far as to omit the angular brackets with which modern scholars are in the habit of adorning their citations of certain ancient writings. It goes without saying that I never believed that my mind was moving in a larger “circle of ideas” than Xenophon’s mind.
The neglect of the Hiero (as well as of the Education of Cyrus) is no doubt partly due to the fashionable underestimation and even contempt of Xenophon’s intellectual powers. Until the end of the eighteenth century, he was generally considered a wise man and a classic in the precise sense. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he is compared as a philosopher to Plato, and found wanting; he is compared as a historian to Thucydides, and found wanting. One need not, as well one might, take issue with the views of philosophy and of history which are presupposed in these comparisons. One merely has to raise the question whether Xenophon wanted to be understood primarily as a philosopher or as a historian. In the manuscripts of his works, he is frequently designated as “the orator Xenophon.” It is reasonable to assume that the temporary eclipse of Xenophon—just as the temporary eclipse of Livy and of Cicero—has been due to a decline in the understanding of the significance of rhetoric: both the peculiar “idealism” and the peculiar “realism” of the nineteenth century were guided by the modern concept of “Art” and for that reason were unable to understand the crucial significance of the lowly art of rhetoric. While they could thus find a place for Plato and Thucydides, they completely failed duly to appreciate Xenophon.
Xenophon’s rhetoric is not ordinary rhetoric; it is Socratic rhetoric. The character of Socratic rhetoric does not become sufficiently clear from the judiciously scattered remarks on the subject that occur in Plato’s and writings, but only from detailed analyses of its products. The most perfect product of Socratic rhetoric is the dialogue. The form of Plato’s dialogues has been discussed frequently, but no one would claim that the problem of the Platonic dialogue has been solved. Modern analyses are, as a rule, vitiated by the estheticist prejudice of the interpreters. Yet Plato’s expulsion of the poets from his best city should have sufficed for discouraging any estheticist approach. It would seeem that the attempt to clarify the meaning of the dialogue should start from an analysis of Xenophon’s dialogue. Xenophon uses far fewer devices than Plato uses even in his simplest works. By understanding the art of Xenophon, one will realize certain minimum requirements that one must fulfill when interpreting any Platonic dialogue, requirements which today are so little fulfilled that they are hardly known.
The dialogue that deserves the name communicates the thought of the author in an indirect or oblique way. Thus the danger of arbitrary interpretation might well seem to be overwhelming. The danger can be overcome only if the greatest possible attention is paid to every detail, and especially to the unthematic details, and if the function of Socratic rhetoric is never lost sight of.
Socratic rhetoric is meant to be an indispensable instrument of philosophy. Its purpose is to lead potential philosophers to philosophy both by training them and by liberating them from the charms which obstruct the philosophic effort, as well as to prevent the access to philosophy of those who are not fit for it. Socratic rhetoric is emphatically just. It is animated by the spirit of social responsibility. It is based on the premise that there is a disproportion between the intransigent quest for truth and the requirements of society, or that not all truths are always harmless. Society will always try to tyrannize thought. Socratic rhetoric is the classic means for ever again frustrating these attempts. This highest kind of rhetoric did not die with the immediate pupils of Socrates. Many monographs bear witness to the fact that great thinkers of later times have used a kind of caution or thrift in communicating their thought to posterity which is no longer appreciated: it ceased to be appreciated at about the same time at which historicism emerged, at about the end of the eighteenth century.
The experience of the present generation has taught us to read the great political literature of the past with different eyes and with different expectations. The lesson may not be without value for our political orientation. We are now brought face to face with a tyranny which holds out the threat of becoming, thanks to “the conquest of nature” and in particular of human nature, what no earlier tyranny ever became: perpetual and universal. Confronted by the appalling alternative that man, or human thought, must be collectivized either by one stroke and without mercy or else by slow and gentle processes, we are forced to wonder how we could escape from this dilemma. We reconsider therefore the elementary and unobtrusive conditions of human freedom.
The historical form in which this reflection is here presented is perhaps not inappropriate. The manifest and deliberate collectivization or coordination of thought is being prepared in a hidden and frequently quite unconscious way by the spread of the teaching that all human thought is collective independently of any human effort directed to this end, because all human thought is historical. There seems to be no more appropriate way of combating this teaching than the study of history.
As has been indicated, one must have some patience if one wants to grasp the meaning of the Hiero. The patience of the interpreter does not make superfluous the patience of the reader of the interpretation. In explaining writings like the Hiero, one has to engage in long-winded and sometimes repetitious considerations which can arrest attention only if one sees their purpose, and it is necessary that this purpose should reveal itself in its proper place, which cannot be at the beginning. If one wants to establish the precise meaning of a subtle hint, one must proceed in a way which comes dangerously close to the loathsome business of explaining a joke. The charm produced by Xenophon’s unobtrusive art is destroyed, at least for a moment, if that art is made obtrusive by the interpretation. Still, I believe that I have not dotted all the i’s. One can only hope that the time will again come when Xenophon’s art will be understood by a generation which, properly trained in their youth, will no longer need cumbersome introductions like the present study.