Ancient Greece & America’s Founding The fall of democracy into tyranny has been a political and philosophical question ever since Socrates hypothesized the potential downfall while living in Athens around 400 B.C at the time of detrimental civil unrest. The first thinker to attempt to answer this question, his reasonings both drew upon the faults he saw with the dramatic poets’ logic and his lifelong search for ultimate truth. Poetic works of the era, including Sophocles’ Three Theban Plays and Aristophanes’ The Clouds, contrast with Plato’s The Republic, allowing for the study of the eventual fall of Athenian democracy through both poetic and philosophical lenses. 2,000 years later, the classically-educated founders of the United States of America draw conclusions based on these works to craft a federal constitution that improves upon Athenian democracy and prevents the fall of into tyranny. James Madison, founding father and author of Federalist Paper No. 10, clearly writes, “A pure democracy…who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction…such democracies have been spectacles of turbulence and contention”. Studying the works of Ancient Greek poets and Plato through the framework of factions, Madison outlines how the U.S. Constitution in Federalist Paper No. 10 will avoid the fall of democracy into tyranny. This is accomplished by balancing regional interests through state governments and national interests through strong federal law, adopting Socrates’ freedom of uncensored speech, and preventing the U.S. from embracing excess freedom.
Antigone
Written chronologically as the first play in a trilogy known as the Three Theban Plays, Antigone by Sophocles takes place dramatically as the third and final play in the series and features two main protagonists: Antigone, the daughter of the deceased King Oedipus, and Creon, the brother-in-law of Oedipus and ruler of Thebes. Both are grounded in their ideals with practical knowledge and appeal to the gods to support their arguments, but two interpretations of law and justice are seen in conflict, with Antigone’s unwritten conventional law of loyalty to family and bloodline and Creon’s new interpretation of state laws as supreme. The battle between Antigone and Creon in Antigone displays the presence of two factions with differing interpretations of law and justice, both rooted in truth yet serving different interests. Madison recognizes a similar contrast in his era, and that by both serving regional interests through state governments and uniting national interests through strong federal law, he can prevent the temptations of tyranny in the United States.
Creon’s attempt to overpower Antigone’s beliefs leads to an unhealthy dose of internal civil war, and in order for a society to have a manageable level of civil war and long-term sustainability, the rule of law must incorporate both interpretations and a balance between the two must exist. This same dynamic between local values and national supremacy laid the way for the battle between state and federal supremacy 2,000 years later in the United States. Madison writes, “The federal constitution forms a happy combination…the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the state.” The U.S. Constitution incorporates both Antigone and Creon’s interpretations of law and justice, creating an effective balance between the interests of local and national populations. At the same time, the Constitution allows states to carve their own path on matters they have a more in-depth grasp on, similar to how bloodline in Antigone knows how to better serve the interests of the family better than the state does.
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Creon continues with his contrasting mindset elevating the needs of the city, (general hunger, sheltering the homeless, love, sex, city defense etc.) and claims that friendships are truer than blood itself. The needs of the city must be scaled up and thought of as modern day national issues, as sheltering the homeless and city defense were relevant to the entire population in Ancient Greek city-states. Madison notices through the pursuits of Creon that only taking into account the population as a national whole is flawed, as Creon’s attempt to mitigate stasis by overpowering Antigone’s view of law in fact creates an overdose of internal civil war that cannot be sustained. In order for local populations to put their faith in the national government, they must be free of tyrannical concerns and given the ability to pave their own path with regard to exercising control over local affairs, or else they will fight against the federal government just as Antigone went to the grave before giving in to Creon’s overcontrolling demands.
However, an indicator of a society’s long-term sustainability and ability to avoid tyranny is a balance between localized law and national law that also mitigates the display of deinon; in this case, the short-term uprisings of radical local government leaders. When addressing the controversy over translation, the renowned philosopher Martin Heidegger plainly states, “Tell me what you think of [a particular] translation, and I will tell you who you are”. This argument legitimizes the theory that two interpretations of a single text or law can coexist with a healthy level of debate and conflict, based on the unique perspective of the reader. Madison recognizes that the influence of a particular interpretation among a faction leader may instigate a following within their particular state. As liberty is to faction as air is to fire, Madions embraces this limited stasis between the local and national governments as it allows for states to challenge a potential tyrannical national government.
The Clouds
The Greek comedy The Clouds by Aristophanes is a poetic critique of Socrates’ philosophy, in which Socrates is criticized for attempting to outsmart the law of Athens with objective logic, independent of societal normalities. The potential execution of the one man, whose philosophy allows for a check on democracy’s natural evolution into tyranny, reveals the relationship between law and philosophy. Philosophy is deemed executable as it allows for questioning the law, a product of Athenian politics. A dichotomy emerges between the poets and Socrates, where poets like Aristophanes must comply with the audience’s morals based on city law, while Socrates has free reign over his speech without constraint. The Clouds by Aristophanes exhibits the dangers of the poetic faction’s subjugation to the tyrannical audiences of Athens and Socrates’ freedom of uncensored speech. Madison’s vision for America includes both the adherence to Socrates’ tradition of uncensored speech and growing the physical size of the country to reduce the impact of impulsive sentiments resulting in regretful actions.
Aristophanes in The Clouds makes his opinions on Socrates and philosophy clear from the beginning, with a character named “Right Argument” to convey his traditional values and the importance of Athenian law and another named “Wrong Argument” to express the fallacies in Socrates’ logic. This bias is clearly to the joy of the audience, with its rigid ideals of Athenian culture and approval controlling which viewpoints are expressed in the plays. The implementation of this obvious bias allows Madison to clearly see how the superior force of the audience’s overbearing majority clearly exhibits the tyrannical nature of suppressing critical, truthful speech, characteristic of Socrates.
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In his analysis of The Clouds titled Socrates and Aristophanes, Leo Strauss argues that the poets are jealous of Socrates’ freedom of uncensored speech and not bearing the burden of proping up current popular notions within Athens. Strauss writes that the primary object of the comic poet’s envy was not Socrates’ wisdom, but his perfect freedom. This perfect freedom Strauss refers to is encapsulated in the Greek word parrhesia, meaning free, uncensored speech. Madison realizes that since no differing opinions are present in the works of the Greek poets, they themselves must in fact be without liberty, since as long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. This void of diversity in thought Madison sees as dangerous to democracy as it has the potential to hide truth that would allow the democracy to check its tyrannical impulses. Socrates’ parrhesia and his ability to speak freely without the judgement of a jury Madison identifies as a vital component to sustained diversity in thought in the United States.
Madison, unlike the Ancient Greeks, views the importance of a large republic, as the pure democracy in Athens with everyone in government gathering in one room, demonstrated how too little physical space was a leading cause of the recurring turmoil. He wrote, “The representatives must be raised to a certain number, in order to guard against the cabals of the few…each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large republic.” This vision has withheld for 230 years, but with the advent of social media in the last decade, this crucial spacing has severely condensed, resulting in social media platforms resembling the faction-dominated, yelling-chambers of Ancient Athenian government. Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell write in the Atlantic regarding Madison, “He thought that the vastness of the United States might offer some protection from the ravages of factionalism, because it would be hard for anyone to spread outrage over such a large distance.” This remained largely true, as the physical separation between regional and national politics provided a healthy buffer for people to check their first reaction impulses. Unfortunately, “As social media has aged, however, optimism has faded and the list of known or suspected harms has grown: Online political discussions (often among anonymous strangers) are experienced as angrier and less civil than those in real life.” Social media platforms have become the Greek poet audiences of Ancient Athens, providing the means for vulgarly vocalizing criticisms to subjects and individuals that do not conform with established norms and immediately venting initial reactions without regard to consequences.
The Republic of Plato
Plato in The Republic gives an account in conversational form of Socrates’ vision for the perfect society, one in which is ruled by philosophical rulers and every aspect of daily life is planned for the benefit of the state. Specifically, in Book VIII of The Republic, Socrates outlines how an oligarchy can naturally decline into a democracy, and even more concerning, how easily a democracy can decline into tyranny without the correct countermeasures. The Republic, unlike the previous two works, describes the tyrannical potential of democracy from a viewpoint of Socratean objective logic. Madison sees the value in this, agreeing with Socrates in that when a democracy becomes too caught up in its excess freedom, unstable factions between former oligarchs and the rest of society are formed.
Socrates in Plato’s The Republic begins with as an established democracy starts to push for more and more freedoms, it begins to act without regard to the laws, written or unwritten, in order that it may avoid having any master at all. Too much freedom is equivalent to a lack of hierarchy enforced by law, and this cuts directly against the fundamental need for structure within a society. This excess freedom, and tradition of having no restraint, greatly worries Madison, as he states, “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgement, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” Clearly, a presence of unrestrained freedom impairs the judgement of the individual against himself, and the complete sum of all these impaired individuals corresponds to a democracy without regard to what is best for long-term sustainability.
How can a collection of flawed individuals, without the guidance of common morals and tradition of law, correctly judge what is “best” for society?
In addition, in realizing the lack of responsibility in a democracy with excess freedom, Socrates argues, “Anything that is done in excess is likely to provoke a correspondingly great change in the opposite direction…too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery, both for private man and city.” This excess freedom not only blurs the lines between what is morally right and wrong, but creates the societal craving for a tyrant to implement direction and give meaning to the people who are currently wandering aimlessly. Madison wants to prevent the United States from becoming ruled by a select few former oligarchs, by insisting that since each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens than in a small republic, it will become more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried.
Socrates also warns that in a democracy without restraint, tyrannical individuals outside the realm of the former oligarchs can also rise to power, “I suppose that in this regime especially, all sorts of human beings come to be.” With no legal restraint on a democracy, the natural instinct of a group of people to appoint a person to power can be flawed, “Aren’t the people always accustomed to set up some one man as their special leader and to foster him and make him grow great?…When a tyrant grows naturally, he sprouts from a root of leadership and from nowhere else” Further, without accountability to a higher rule of law, this chosen person will take advantage of the unrestrained freedom, and instead of acting in the benefit of the people, will only act in his self interest.
Clearly, by studying the works of Ancient Greek poets and Plato through the framework of factions, Madison outlines how the U.S. constitution in Federalist Paper No. 10 will avoid the fall of democracy into tyranny. The study of Antigone reveals how in order for local populations to put their faith in the national government, they must be free of tyrannical concerns and given the ability to pave their own path with regard to exercising control over local affairs. If not, they will fight against the federal government just as Antigone went to the grave before giving in to Creon’s over-controlling demands. The void of diversity in thought in The Clouds Madison sees as dangerous to democracy as it has the potential to hide truth that would allow the democracy to check its tyrannical impulses. Socrates’ parrhesia and his ability to speak freely without the judgement of a jury Madison identifies as a vital component to sustained diversity in thought in the United States. Lastly, Adopting Socrates’ freedom of uncensored speech and preventing the U.S. from embracing excess freedom thwarts the societal craving for a tyrant to implement direction and give purpose to the people who live without meaning in an unrestrained democracy.
