Abstract
Jonny Thakkar’s book, Plato as Critical Theorist, begins with the observation that, while ideal theories offering visions of a better future for liberal democracies have waned considerably in recent years, there is widespread discontent with our current situation that actually points to a longing for radical transformation of our political and economic structures (2–4, 16–17). Thakkar’s ambition for his book is to work out an ideal theory that bears a relation to our contemporary liberal democratic practices while motivating us to change the problematic aspects of our current societies in relation to a vision of the best possible us (16). The daring wager of Thakkar’s book is that Plato, alongside John Rawls and Karl Marx, offers us such an ideal theory, and a notion of what it is to do ideal theorizing, that can supply us with a critical perspective on our current situation, as well as a model of philosophic citizenship that ought to be practiced by all liberal democratic citizens.
In order to do this, the first half of Thakkar’s book (chapters 1–4) offers a lucid and original interpretation of the metaphysics of Plato’s Republic, Plato’s notion of ruling and philosophy and their interconnections, and an account of how Plato’s ideal theory served as a form of critical theory directed at altering his fellow Athenians’ perceptions of their society. In the second half of the book (chapters 5–7), Thakkar proceeds to show how Plato’s ideal theory can be reconciled with Rawls’s political liberalism to offer a compelling ideal of philosophical citizenship for contemporary liberal democracies and how it can be reconciled with Marx’s critique of capitalism to offer a compelling critique of our current socioeconomic situation.
Thakkar states that the heart of his idealistic argument is the Platonic belief in philosopher-rulers, which he claims becomes much clearer once Plato’s notions of metaphysics, philosophy, and ruling are reinterpreted in contrast to most traditional interpretations of them. One of the great strengths of Thakkar’s book is his ability to reinterpret many of the very passages of the Republic that have been used to construct these traditional views of Plato. Thakkar’s first target is the two-worlds picture of Platonic metaphysics, which holds that there is a world of sense and a separate world of ideas, and that philosophy is about grasping the world of ideas. While Thakkar admits that many passages in the Republic make it clear that the philosopher does transcend everyday sensory cognition, he argues that this can be accounted for with a one-world interpretation of Platonic metaphysics by assuming that all worldly objects have two aspects: a sensible and a formal one (44). Like Aristotle, Plato understood form in accordance with a teleological conception of being, such that the formal aspect of an object is just the “optimal principle for organizing [a certain] material toward a given end” (54). Understanding this optimal principle—that is, how it is best for a given object to be—requires understanding the role the object plays in “a wider functional context made up of various other objects,” where the ultimate functional context is the cosmos (59). Finally, to know goodness does not, as the two-worlds view holds, require that we mystically apprehend some enigmatic entity that lies outside the world, but only that we “engage in a dialectical back-and-forth between our understanding of particular forms and our understanding of the whole which they constitute” (70). While forms might be immaterial aspects of objects, knowing them is required in order to get one’s bearings among the particular things on earth, and thus the notion of philosopher-rulers becomes much more tenable with a one-world view of Platonic metaphysics (81–82).
The next question Thakkar addresses is what Plato’s understanding of ruling must be such that it requires this kind of knowledge. The important point is that while ruling may involve holding offices, this is not the core of ruling for Plato. Instead, ruling in the proper sense involves “seeking and ordering what is advantageous for one’s subjects (342e; 345d-e, 347d)” (88). The true ruler is thus a steward of souls, and because souls are formed by the sociocultural environment, the ruler must also maintain the city in its best possible condition (91). To achieve this goal, rulers can exercise political power and shape political institutions and the social division of labor, but they can also shape the sociocultural environment via images and symbols that are purveyed through poetry and the arts. But in order to do both of these things well, rulers must understand the function of each part of the city in light of the good, and it is philosophy that allows them to achieve this understanding. Second, if rulers are to maintain the city’s overall psychic health, then they must be able to guard over their own psychic health, and once again philosophy fits this bill because it prevents rulers from desiring material goods over the immaterial goods of wisdom (94).
But how do philosophers shape the sociocultural environment so that citizens of the ideal city absorb a conception of the good life that reflects the conclusions of the philosopher’s dialectical inquiries? According to Thakkar, the first step is to construct customs and linguistic usages—especially concerning the just, the beautiful, and the good—that reflect nature as the interlocking system of formal and final causes such that the whole city becomes a school that inculcates true beliefs about the good life (131–34). The second step involves constructing theoretical ideals “that visualize our understanding by perfectly exemplifying the true form of X as we currently conceive it” (143). The Republic’s images of the just man and the just city aid Socrates and his interlocutors in their “reasoning regarding what cities and souls are, and how they can best be” (143). But these models also serve a function for the citizens of the ideal city because they offer exemplars for imitation, and by imitating these models, the citizens end up shaping their own characters in accordance with what is truly just, beautiful, and good (155).
However, according to Thakkar, Plato’s idealism was not limited to its role in Kallipolis but was also intended as an intervention into the nonideal society of Athens. In fact, his construction of theoretical models was intended both to give Athenians a new model of the good life and to get them to think critically about their own democracy. In other words, his idealism was intricately related to his critical theory. In fact, it is when speaking of Plato as a critical theorist of Athens that Thakkar turns to the other famous images or models of the Republic. These images and models also further Plato’s critical theory of Athens but, unlike theoretical models, they work via falsehood or caricature and include the noble lie, the myth of Er, and the caricature of democracy. According to Thakkar, Plato’s depiction of democracy in Book 8 is a caricature that misrepresents the realities of Athenian democracy, for instance, by framing democratic freedom as the freedom of “democratic citizens to accept or reject rules as they see fit (557e-558a)” (201). However, Socrates’s serious point in this caricature is that democracy’s thirst for all types of freedom causes it to neglect ruling as the shaping of souls, and this is what renders it incapable of maintaining itself as a stable social order (204–5). Socrates’s caricature of democracy is thus meant to shock Athenian citizens into thinking seriously about this deficiency.
How though does Plato’s ideal and critical theory apply to contemporary liberal democracies? Thakkar’s strategy for applying Plato to modern liberal democracy is to modify Plato’s theory wherever it conflicts with core liberal democratic commitments while retaining the key elements of his ideal theory that can help provide a model for modern liberal democratic citizenship (224–25). Just as Plato’s ideal theorizing and its concomitant political activity in democratic Athens did not require that Plato himself hold political office, so modern citizens can engage in this kind of ideal theorizing outside of political office and thus engage their polities not as philosopher-kings but as philosopher-citizens.
The first element of Platonism that is modified is Plato’s paternalistic belief that elites should determine the social structure and cultural environment and tell people how to live the good life (233). In its place, Thakkar accepts that any viable modern political ideal must include tolerance for ideological pluralism among its citizens (236). The second element of Platonism that is modified by Thakkar is Plato’s cosmic teleology, which holds that each institution in a society has a distinctive function to play within the wider cosmos, and that this function is discoverable by the philosopher because the universe has a good and knowable order (243–44). In its place, Thakkar argues for what he calls “normative functionalism,” which is simply the claim that “institutions are better, other things being equal, when they cohere around a single goal” (244). According to Thakkar, this kind of normative functionalism is implicit in our ordinary understanding of institutions: We expect institutions to be coherently ordered toward a given function and consider them dysfunctional when, for example, two departments duplicate the same work or counteract each other’s work (245). In order to govern institutions, managers have to engage in the kind of back and forth reasoning between visions of the whole and visions of the parts that is characteristic of what Plato meant by philosophizing (248). This kind of ideal theorizing does not have to involve pie-in-the-sky thinking about the best possible institution in the world but can be related to the best possible us, where “built into that ‘us’ are certain imperfections that we may treat as more or less given depending on the time horizon” (250). In this sense, Thakkar’s notion of idealism is distinct from utopian schemas that project unrealizable impossibilities (6–8, 335).
Instead of Plato’s supposition that all governors of institutions will ultimately converge on the same account of the good life, Thakkar argues that normative functionalism will result in a plurality of local ideals and that stakeholders in these institutions can hold governors accountable for these ideals, thus reconciling Plato’s idealism with the pluralism of modern liberalism and the accountability of modern democracy (251–52). This refined Platonic idealism applies not only to institutions of civil society but also to activities of the state, since lawmakers considering a new policy will have to consider how it fits with other policies, and to do so “they should form an idea of how their society currently is and how it might be improved” (253). In this form, Platonism can supplement and even enrich Rawlsian political liberalism by offering an account of what good governance looks like in both civil society and the state (253).
In addition to pluralism and accountability, Thakkar argues that Platonic ideal theory can be modified to fit in with the democratic notion of self-rule by citizens. According to Thakkar, both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Rawls argue that laws will be alien institutions and society will be unstable unless citizens understand the principles that animate their major institutions. This means that citizens, no less than governors, ought to be philosophers in the Platonic sense (258–59). If Rawlsian citizens in nonideal societies must resist unjust institutions, then they will have to work out the correct principles of justice for themselves, and thus political philosophy “ought to be a part of everyday life” (260). Also, since ruling in the Platonic sense involves disseminating images and models of the good life in order to shape souls, citizens in liberal democracies are always able to perform this aspect of ruling for themselves and thus to engage in philosophic citizenship: “From stories and sculptures to jokes and salutations to tables and chairs, each of our works is apt to be imitated by others, known or unknown. And each of them is apt to communicate, and hence to spread or reinforce, certain assumptions about the social world and the human good. It follows that each and every one of us is a steward of the social imaginary” (262).
If Plato’s idealism, rightly modified, can be translated into a liberal democratic ideal of philosophic citizenship in order to enrich political liberalism, Plato’s critical theory, rightly modified, can add depth to a Marxian critique of capitalism, thus speaking directly to the very dissatisfaction toward the world with which Thakkar’s book began. Here Thakkar shows how Plato’s critique of moneymaking in Book 1 of the Republic aligns with Marx’s critiques of capitalism (279–308). Both Plato and Marx oppose Adam Smith’s notion that self-serving, egoistic individuals within a free market system end up promoting the good of others as well as the common good. Instead, moneymaking or capitalism fulfills social needs only haphazardly and this eventually leads to a dysfunctional society (287–91).
For Thakkar, Marx shared Plato’s vision of a well-functioning society where labor is consciously directed to the common good and where the primary purpose of society is to satisfy our basic needs and then to realize our human nature (313). The differences between their theories can in fact be used to bolster each of their ideals. Marx’s belief that humans are equal and should be able to choose their occupations, and his view that specialization impoverishes rather than perfects humans, can be used to bring Plato’s concept of the social division of labor more in line with liberal democratic societies, where individuals are allowed to choose the type of work that is enriching for them (315). In turn, Plato’s notion that theoretical ideals and models can be used to shift the social imaginary and thereby effect a change in the political landscape adds an important political dimension to Marx’s critical theory along the very lines that were later developed by Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse (317).
Second, coupling Plato’s notion of philosophical citizenship with Marx’s notion of immanent critique allows us to see that there are solutions available to remedy our current capitalist malaise. Whenever we criticize, for example, a news corporation for caring about money instead of providing the public with an accurate story, we do so with an implicit notion that the news corporation’s function ought to be working for the common good by providing accurate news (321). But this recognition also means more positively that capitalism has not become hegemonic in our society (323). As philosophic citizens, we can take it upon ourselves to try to defend or even create spaces for genuine craftsmanship in the Platonic and Marxist sense, and by doing so we can in turn influence other people’s sense of what is “natural, possible, and desirable” (324). At the institutional and state level, this requires considering alternative structures of ownership and accountability that would shield the work environment from the logic of capital accumulation (325). Both Marx and Plato thus offer a realistic critical theory about how societies malfunction because of the logic of capital and a positive political program for citizens and states alike.
Thakkar’s book is impressive and important on a number of different levels. First, it provides an innovative defense of idealism in modern political theory against the realist critiques of it recently articulated by Amartya Sen and Raymond Geuss. Second, it offers a challenging new interpretation of Plato’s Republic that places Plato’s teaching about philosopher-rulers at its center, while showing how this notion fits with both the ideal theorizing of Books 2–7 and the nonideal theorizing of Books 8 and 9. Third, it creates new terrain within the recent scholarship that seeks to show how Plato’s Republic can be reconciled with contemporary democratic theory by showing how Plato can be reconciled with the political liberalism of John Rawls. Finally, it synthesizes three vastly different thinkers—Plato, Rawls, and Marx—to articulate an ideal and critical theory that offers a possible way out of our current malaise regarding advanced capitalism.
That said, I remain unconvinced that Plato, the critical theorist of democratic Athens and of contemporary capitalism, would want his own theories modified to the degree that Thakkar thinks is necessary for them to be reconciled with Rawls’s political liberalism (224). If Plato’s Republic was designed to get the democratic Athenians to move from Periclean self-congratulation to Platonic self-criticism, then surely it can play the same role for Rawls’s political liberalism. In fact, it seems to me that Thakkar’s own account of philosophical citizenship, in the second half of the book, is actually performing such a critique of Rawlsian liberalism. In contrast to Rawls’s chastened notion of public reason, Thakkar argues that both citizens and governors alike ought to “seek wisdom in the relevant sense – that is, an understanding of what the good life is and how harmonious order can bring it about” (156). While Thakkar himself argues that this wisdom should restrict itself to instilling the liberal virtues of “tolerance, respect, civility, and fairness” (254), his own account of philosophical citizenship often suggests a place for the Platonic ideals of beauty and harmony.
Conversely, Thakkar might unnecessarily widen the gap between Plato, Rousseau, and Rawls on the importance of democratic self-rule and accountability. Thakkar himself admits that the account of democracy in Book 8 of the Republic is a caricature. Yet, for a theorist concerned to show how Plato can speak to contemporary political theory, there is a dearth of engagement with the works of scholars such as Sara Monoson, Peter Euben, Elizabeth Markovits, Jill Frank, and Arlene Saxonhouse. These theorists have all convincingly shown that Plato’s Republic does actually caricature and criticize imperial democratic Athens for its anarchy, pleonexia (overreaching, greed), and flattery while simultaneously valorizing the democratic ideals of accountability, self-rule, and parrhēsia (frank speech).
These criticisms do not diminish the importance of Thakkar’s book, especially in its ability to bring Plato’s Republic into constructive conversation with contemporary liberal democratic theory and Marxian critical theory. Finally, his cogent and insightful account of Plato’s Republic should be on the reading list of those approaching the dialogue for the first time as well as those who have mined its insights for decades.