Studies on the Reception of Plato and Greek Political Thought in Victorian Britain (Variorum Collected Studies) [1 ed.] 9781409420514, 1409420515

Table of contents :
Cover
Series Page
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Publisher's Note
Introduction
Acknowledgements
The History of Ancient Greece
I: In Defence of the British Constitution: Theoretical Implications of the Debate Over Athenian Democracy in Britain, 1770–1850 History of Political Thought 17, 1996
II: Bishop Connop Thirlwall: Historian of Ancient Greece Quaderni di Storia 56, 2002
III: Victorian Classicists and Modern Greece: A Critical Commentary on Periodical Sources Thetis 11–12, 2005, pp. 159–170
Platonic Studies
IV: Grote on Socrates: An Unpublished Essay of the 1820s in Its Context Dialogos 3, 1996
V: The Development of Platonic Studies in Britain and The Role of the Utilitarians Utilitas 8, 1996
VI: George Grote and The Platonic Revival in Victorian Britain Quaderni di Storia 47, 1998
VII: Socratic Dialectic and The Exaltation of Individuality: Quaderni di Storia 69, 2009
VIII: The Revival of a Legend: The Debate Over Plato in Nineteenth-Century Britain Quaderni di Storia 61, 2005
IX: The Sophists, Democracy, and Modern Interpretation Polis 14, 1995, pp. 1–29
Supplementary Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Also in the Variorum Collected Studies Series:

HAROLD TARRANT From the Old Academy to Later Neo-Platonism Studies in the History of Platonic Thought

JOHN GASCOIGNE Science, Philosophy and Religion in the Age of the Enlightenment British and Global Contexts

NANCY S. STRUEVER The History of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of History

BERNARD LIGHTMAN Evolutionary Naturalism in Victorian Britain The ‘Darwinians’ and their Critics

F. EDWARD CRANZ Reorientations of Western Thought from Antiquity to the Renaissance

STEPHEN GERSH Reading Plato, Tracing Plato From Ancient Commentary to Medieval Reception

JOSEPH M. LEVINE Re-enacting the Past Essays on the Evolution of Modern English Historiography

J.H.M. SALMON Ideas and Contexts in France and England from the Renaissance to the Romantics

JOHN GASCOIGNE Science, Politics and Universities in Europe, 1600–1800

JOHN M. DILLON The Great Tradition Further Studies in the Development of Platonism and Early Christianity

DONALD R. KELLEY The Writing of History and the Study of Law

PASCHALIS M. KITROMILIDES Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy Studies in the Culture and Political Thought of Southeastern Europe

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

Studies on the Reception of Plato and Greek Political Thought in Victorian Britain

Kyriakos Demetriou

Studies on the Reception of Plato and Greek Political Thought in Victorian Britain

First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition © 2011 by Kyriakos Demetriou Kyriakos Demetriou has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and 3DWHQWV$FWWREHLGHQWL¿HGDVWKHDXWKRURIWKLVZRUN All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice.. Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 'HPHWULRX.\ULDNRV1  6WXGLHVRQWKHUHFHSWLRQRI3ODWRDQG*UHHNSROLWLFDOWKRXJKWLQ9LFWRULDQ%ULWDLQ – (Variorum collected studies series)  &ODVVLFLVWV±*UHDW%ULWDLQ±+LVWRU\±WKFHQWXU\3ODWRQLVWV±*UHDW  %ULWDLQ±+LVWRU\±WKFHQWXU\3KLORVRSK\$QFLHQW±6WXG\DQGWHDFKLQJ  ±*UHDW%ULWDLQ±+LVWRU\±WKFHQWXU\3ROLWLFDOVFLHQFH±*UHHFH±6WXG\   DQGWHDFKLQJ±*UHDW%ULWDLQ±+LVWRU\±WKFHQWXU\3ROLWLFDOVFLHQFH±  &ODVVLFDOLQÀXHQFHV3ROLWLFDOVFLHQFH±*UHDW%ULWDLQ±+LVWRU\±WK  FHQWXU\3ODWR±,QÀXHQFH*URWH*HRUJH±±3KLORVRSK\  ,7LWOH,,6HULHV   ±GF Library of Congress Control Number: ISBN 13: 978-1-4094-2051-4 (hbk)

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS971

CONTENTS Introduction

vii

Acknowledgements

xii

THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT GREECE I

In defence of the British Constitution: theoretical implications of the debate over Athenian democracy in Britain, 1770–1850

280–297

History of Political Thought 17, 1996

II

Bishop Connop Thirlwall: historian of ancient Greece

49–90

Quaderni di storia 56, 2002

III

Victorian classicists and modern Greece: a critical commentary on periodical sources

1–32

Thetis 11–12, 2005, pp. 159–170

PLATONIC STUDIES IV

Grote on Socrates: an unpublished essay of the 1820s in its context

36–50

Dialogos 3, 1996

V

The development of Platonic studies in Britain and the role of the utilitarians

15–37

Utilitas 8, 1996

VI

George Grote and the Platonic revival in Victorian Britain

17–59

Quaderni di storia 47, 1998

VII

Socratic dialectic and the exaltation of individuality: -60LOO¶VLQÀXHQFHRQ**URWH¶V3ODWRQLFLQWHUSUHWDWLRQ Quaderni di storia 69, 2009

±

vi

VIII

CONTENTS

The revival of a legend: the debate over Plato in nineteenth-century Britain

59–101

Quaderni di storia 61, 2005

IX

The sophists, democracy, and modern interpretation

1–24

Polis 14, 1995, pp. 1–29

Supplementary Bibliography

1–3

Index

1–4 This volume contains xii + 280 pages

PUBLISHER’S NOTE The articles in this volume, as in all others in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, have not been given a new, continuous pagination. In order to avoid confusion, and to facilitate their use where these same studies have been referred to elsewhere, the original pagination has been maintained wherever possible. Each article has been given a Roman number in order of appearance, as listed in the Contents. This number is repeated on each page and is quoted in the index entries.

INTRODUCTION The history of the classical tradition is as old as the classical texts. The ancient Greek word for ‘tradition’ is ‘›͎̺͍͇̿͂͐͏’, stemming from the verb ‘›͎͖͇̿̿͂̽͂͊’ (Latin tradere), meaning ‘hand down’ or transmit. Studying the history of classical reception is analysing the ways by which Greek and 5RPDQ SKLORVRSK\ OLWHUDWXUH SROLWLFDO LQVWLWXWLRQV FXOWXUH DQG DUW GH¿QHG broadly as texts and contexts) were handed down or transmitted to successive generations before being absorbed into new social and cultural frameworks. It is an exploration of the often complex process of the appropriation (or PLVDSSURSULDWLRQ RIVSHFL¿FDOO\*UHHNDQG5RPDQDQWLTXLW\IRUWKHSXUSRVH of lending support, status, and inspiration to other cultures or social systems DQGYDOXHV([SORULQJFODVVLFDOUHFHSWLRQLVE\GH¿QLWLRQDMRXUQH\LQWRDQGDQ encounter with past generations who have variously interpreted, re-imagined, DQGUHIDVKLRQHGFODVVLFDODQWLTXLW\WRPHHWWKHLUVWDQGDUGVDQGKRZLWHYHQWXDOO\ ¿OWHUHGLWLQWRWKHLURZQFXOWXUDOSROLWLFDODQGVRFLDOLQVWLWXWLRQV Until the early twentieth century, the history of classical reception within academia implied a much narrower commitment to an essentially philologicalOLWHUDU\ DFWLYLW\ DV VKRZQ IRU LQVWDQFH LQ WKH ÀRXULVKLQJ QLQHWHHQWKFHQWXU\ German scholarship), sporadically expanding on biographical accounts as well as on descriptive explorations of the history of teaching and learning of the classics.1 7RGD\ WKH ¿HOG GHPRQVWUDWHV D OLYHO\ GLYHUVLW\ ERWK LQ methodological approaches and the conceptual and theoretical frameworks employed on the range of classical receptions, extending to fascinating aspects RI WH[WV DQG FRQWH[WV DQG WKHLU DIWHUOLIH ± DSSDUHQWO\ UHÀHFWLQJ DQ H[SDQGHG 1 The Anglophone roots of the study of the classical tradition can be traced back to the pioneering works of Gilbert Highet, Robert R. Bolgar, Arnaldo Momigliano, and Martin L. Clarke. See G. Highet, 7KH&ODVVLFDO7UDGLWLRQ*UHHNDQG5RPDQ,QÀXHQFHVLQ:HVWHUQ/LWHUDWXUH(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949); R.R. Bolgar, 7KH&ODVVLFDO+HULWDJHDQGLWV%HQH¿FLDULHVIURPWKH &DUROLQJLDQ$JHWRWKH(QGRIWKH5HQDLVVDQFH (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954); M.L. Clarke, *UHHN 6WXGLHV LQ (QJODQG ± (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945); and &ODVVLFDO(GXFDWLRQLQ%ULWDLQ±(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959). See also M. Finley, ed., 7KH/HJDF\RI*UHHFH$1HZ$SSUDLVDO (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981); R. Jenkyns, ed., 7KH/HJDF\RI5RPH$1HZ$SSUDLVDO (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Earlier studies, mainly bio-bibliographical, are J.E. Sandys, +LVWRU\ RI &ODVVLFDO 6FKRODUVKLS (Cambridge, 1921), 3 vols.; R. Pfeiffer, +LVWRU\RI&ODVVLFDO6FKRODUVKLSIURPWKH%HJLQQLQJWRWKH (QGRIWKH+HOOHQLVWLF$JH (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968); and idem, +LVWRU\RI&ODVVLFDO6FKRODUVKLS ± (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976).

viii

INTRODUCTION

awareness of the diversity of classical experience itself – that have been hitherto left unexamined.2 Reception studies since the late 1980s have evolved LQWRDSURPLQHQW¿HOGRIVFKRODUO\GHEDWHWDNLQJWKHIRUPRILQWHUGLVFLSOLQDU\ researches whereby a variety of disciplines such as classical philology, gender DQGFXOWXUDOVWXGLHVSKLORVRSK\DQGLQWHOOHFWXDOKLVWRU\MRLQWRJHWKHUWRRIIHU vivid accounts of the manners in which classical texts and ideas were perceived, disseminated, and re-emerged in various contexts. The present collection of articles deals with two thematic areas in the modern history of classical reception: the history of ancient Greece (articles ,±,,,  DQG 3ODWRQLF VWXGLHV DUWLFOHV ,9±,;  ,Q DW OHDVW ¿YH VWXGLHV KHUHLQ WKHFHQWUDO¿JXUHLV*HRUJH*URWH± WKH9LFWRULDQµSKLORVRSKLFDO radical’ and banker who belonged to the energetic Utilitarian circle of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Grote’s prominent place in studies relating to 9LFWRULDQ3ODWRQLVPDQG*UHHNKLVWRULRJUDSK\GRHVQRWUHTXLUHDQ\SDUWLFXODU MXVWL¿FDWLRQ3 As Momigliano succinctly put it some sixty years ago, ‘Under Grote’s archonship a new era started’ in Greek historiography and Platonic criticism. Grote’s sound scholarship spurred a new appreciation for classical UHSXEOLFDQLVP WKDW WUDQVIRUPHG WKH ¿HOG RI DQFLHQW *UHHN KLVWRULRJUDSK\ LQ (XURSHMXVWDVLWPDUNHGWKHEHJLQQLQJRIDQHZHUDRI3ODWRQLFFULWLFLVP *URWH¶V DFKLHYHPHQW ZDV HQRUPRXV MXGJHG ERWK LQ KLV RZQ WLPH DQG later, and his profound services to classical studies immediately earned him a worldwide reputation. His PDJQXPRSXV, the 12-volume +LVWRU\RI*UHHFH (1846–56), effectively reversed the traditional view of Athenian democracy as an oppressive mob rule that detested individual liberty, and pointed out emphatically the direct relationship between political freedom and intellectual progress (article I). The works of Grote’s predecessors, like Temple Stanyan

2 For the revisionist approaches to the history of classical reception(s) and useful bibliographical guides, see Lorna Hardwick and Chris Stray, eds, $ &RPSDQLRQ WR &ODVVLFDO 5HFHSWLRQV (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008); C.W. Kallendorf, ed., $&RPSDQLRQWR&ODVVLFDO7UDGLWLRQ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007); L. Hardwick, 5HFHSWLRQ 6WXGLHV (New Surveys in the Classics, no. 33): Greece & Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); C. Martindale and R.F. Thomas, eds, &ODVVLFV DQG WKH 8VHV RI 5HFHSWLRQ (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006); J.L. Machor and P. Goldstein, eds, 5HFHSWLRQ6WXG\)URP/LWHUDU\7KHRU\WR&XOWXUDO6WXGLHV (London: Routledge, 2001). See, in addition, W.M. Calder III and R.S. Smith, $6XSSOHPHQWDU\%LEOLRJUDSK\WRWKH +LVWRU\RI&ODVVLFDO6FKRODUVKLS%DUL(GL]LRQL'HGDOR $OOERRNVH[SORUHFUXFLDOTXHVWLRQV about theories, methodological approaches, and the scope of Classical Reception. 3 See Momigliano’s praiseworthy account of Grote in*HRUJH*URWHDQGWKH6WXG\RI*UHHN +LVWRU\, University College London Inaugural Lecture (London: H.K. Lewis, 1952); and see also the more recent account of the ‘chorus of approval’ in the historical and philosophical literature in Paul Cartledge, $+LVWRU\RI*UHHFH)URPWKH7LPHRI6RORQWR%&, condensed and edited by J.M. Mitchell and M.O.B. Caspari [1907], with a new introduction by P. Cartledge (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. ix–xx.

INTRODUCTION

ix

(1677–1752), Edward W. Montague (1714–76), Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74), William Mitford (1744–1827), and John Gillies (1747–1836), had been, for different reasons, united in treating ancient history as a vehicle for moral catechism and political instruction. Athenian democracy represented a malfunctioning model to be avoided at all costs. Instead, Grote’s political and philosophical vision of Greece focused on Periclean democracy as the prototype of constitutional liberalism. One exception to the politicized, historic-didactic compilations was undoubtedly the 8-volume +LVWRU\ RI Greece (1835–44), written by Bishop Connop Thirlwall (article II). The work of this undeservedly neglected classicist is here critically re-appraised, showing that it represents the practical embodiment of the spirit of transition between SDUWLVDQDQGµVFLHQWL¿F¶KLVWRULRJUDSK\&RQVWLWXWLQJDEULGJHEHWZHHQWKHROG DQG WKH QHZ DQG KDYLQJ IXO¿OOHG LWV UROH 7KLUOZDOO¶V ZRUN ZDV GHVWLQHG WR sink into oblivion, virtually obscured in the shadow of George Grote’s Greece. A group of renowned classical scholars that succeeded Grote – John Stuart Blackie (1809–95), Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–92), and John Pentland Mahaffy (1830–1919) – shared their predecessors’ lively interest in classical politics and literature, yet their ‘Hellenic Ideal’ mingled with ideological UHVSRQVHVWRFRQWHPSRUDU\QLQHWHHQWKFHQWXU\TXHVWLRQVRQ*UHHNQDWLRQDOLW\ DQGUDFLDOFRQWLQXLW\±DTXHVWLRQDVVRFLDWHGZLWK-DFRE3KLOLSS)DOOPHUD\HU¶V (1790–1861) doubts, in his *HVFKLFKWH GHU +DOELQVHO 0RUHD ZlKUHQG GHV 0LWWHODOWHUV (1830), on the perceived identity of the ancient and modern Greeks (article III). Grote’s accounts of the philosophy of Socrates and Plato, informed by the rational outlook of a humanist philosophical radical, were a fertilizing LQÀXHQFH DQG DUH VWLOO XVHG DV SDUW RI WKH RQJRLQJ DWWHPSWV E\ SKLORVRSKHUV and classicists to come to terms with numerous problems in interpreting the Platonic dialogues (articles IV–VI). Grote’s understanding of Plato has its roots in a forgotten essay in the manuscripts section of the British Museum, brought to light here (article IV), together with a commentary on the idea of Socrates as a philosophical and religious hero in the eighteenth century. Article V is a general exploration of the contribution of James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and George Grote to the revival of Platonic studies in nineteenth-century Britain. The Utilitarians approached Plato as the exponent of critical epistemology and, unlike earlier commentators, attempted to separate the method from various metaphysical doctrines long attributed to the philosopher. James Mill and J.S. 0LOOZHQWVRIDUDVWRTXHVWLRQWKHH[LVWHQFHRIDGRFWULQDOIDFHWLQ3ODWRQLVPLQ WKHFRQWH[WRIWKHLUFULWLTXHRI1HRSODWRQLVPDQGP\VWLFLVPDVVRFLDWHGZLWKWKH work of the ‘paganist’ Thomas Taylor (1758–1835). Grote’s analysis, against German Platonic systematizing trends, managed to expose Plato’s interpretive complexity.

x

INTRODUCTION

An examination of the pre-Grotean treatment of Plato in Victorian Britain helps to establish Grote’s divergence from existing interpretations (article VI). The Victorian Platonist borrowed his tools from Empiricism and Utilitarianism, and therefore he was generally averse to current idealist, Romantic, or Christianized Platonic interpretations. In Grote’s study, Plato is gradually transformed into a predecessor of Utilitarianism, to be criticized only when their philosophical commonality seems to be thin, as for instance in some of Plato’s dogmatic dialogues. But this sort of criticism is overshadowed by Grote’s marked respect and admiration for the philosopher. Article VII examines in detail Grote’s Platonic analysis in light of J.S. Mill’s philosophy DQGVKRZVWKHH[WHQWRIWKHODWWHU¶VLQÀXHQFHRQVKDSLQJKLVPlato and the other &RPSDQLRQVRI6RNUDWHV (3 vols, 1865). Grote’s monumental study integrated extensively Mill’s insights about the values of individuality, freedom, and selfdevelopment into a framework that remained tied to the Empiricism he shared with the Utilitarians. Plato should be read in light of Mill’s On /LEHUW\and /RJLF, works that endowed Grote with the analytical and conceptual framework to develop and enlarge his interpretive scheme. The aftermath of Grote’s Platonic analysis is examined, and especially that part of the history of the Platonic tradition in the late nineteenth century that paved the way for the twentiethcentury attack on Plato’s politics (article VIII). This facet in the history of Platonic tradition is essentially anti-Grotean in both philosophical perspective and ideological motivation. More particularly, it discusses the appropriation of Plato by the British Idealists, like Thomas H. Green (1836–82), Bernard %RVDQTXHW ±  (GZDUG &DLUG ±  DQG 'DYLG * 5LWFKLH ± DQGVKRZVKRZWKDWDSSURSULDWLRQKDGDIRUPDWLYHLQÀXHQFHRQ VXEVHTXHQW3ODWRQLFLQWHUSUHWDWLRQ:RUNVZULWWHQLQWKHOLJKWRISKLORVRSKLFDO idealism were essentially unanimous in stressing the unitary philosophical genius of Plato, while emphasizing the value of his moral and political thought for counterbalancing the allegedly extreme individualism and commercialism of the modern age. Not surprisingly, when Karl Popper published his 2SHQ 6RFLHW\DQGLWV(QHPLHV(1945), he attacked the British Idealists and eulogized Grote’s Platonic analysis. The last study in this volume (article IX) offers a critical examination of the reception of the sophists in modern intellectual historiography. Their association with ancient democracy is shown to be linked with the modern notion of negative liberty, basically as a matter of freedom from interference in the pursuit of one’s lawful ends. If the sophists are examined within their historical and ideological contexts, we can see that their advocacy of political individualism eventually turned against the prescriptive basis of Athenian democratic rule and undermined the vital principle of the sovereignty of the demos. In a period of fundamental political changes, the teaching of the sophists

INTRODUCTION

xi

tended to alienate the aristocratic elite from the social and political framework created by democratic egalitarianism, preparing thereby the transition to the new political ethos of fourth-century Athenian life. 6LQFH WKH SXEOLFDWLRQ RI WKH DUWLFOHV LQ WKLV FROOHFWLRQ WKH VXEMHFW KDV been enriched by a number of studies related to the themes discussed here. These studies are worth listing, so an addendum with updated bibliographical information seemed necessary. This volume is gratefully dedicated to Peter Nicholson and Fred Rosen for their gracious encouragement and support over the years of study and research. I also remember with high appreciation the fruitful discussions I had with Janet Coleman and the inspiring correspondence with George L. Huxley. I am also deeply thankful to Luciano Canfora for being always enthusiastic to receive and read my works. Finally, I humbly hope that the book would be a tribute to that great Victorian who changed forever the way we all think about ancient Greece and its people, George Grote. KYRIAKOS DEMETRIOU 8QLYHUVLW\RI&\SUXV 'HFHPEHU

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following persons, institutions, journals and publishers for their kind permission to reproduce the papers included in this volume: Imprint Academic, Exeter (for article I); Professor Luciano Canfora, editor of Quaderni di storia, and Edizioni Dedalo, Bari (II, VI, VII, VIII); Professor Heinz A. Richter, editor of Thetis, and the University of Mannheim (III); Taylor and Francis Group (http://www.informaworld.com) (IV); Edinburgh University Press (V); and the Society for Greek Political Thought (Polis) (IX).

I

IN DEFENCE OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION: THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE DEBATE OVER ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY IN BRITAIN, 1770-1850

Richard Shilleto, a distinguished Professor of Classical Greek at Trinity College, Cambridge, published in 1851 a furious pamphlet reviewing George Grote's History of Greece, and recommended the 'excellent' work of William Mitford as an antidote to the extreme republicanism with which Grote's work was preswnably pervaded. In his introductory note Shilleto acknowledged explicitly that he 'opened and read throughout Mr. Grote's volume with great prejudice against its author- the prejudice of one not ashamed to call himself a Tory against one not ... ashamed to call himself a Republican'. 1 This review is indicative of the character of historical criticism favoured by those who had earlier attempted to give an account of ancient Greek politics. Indeed, the Cambridge scholar placed himself in an embarrassing position.2 His criticism Jacked liberal sense, and overlooked the development of historiography in the nineteenth century. In his task of interpreting past phenomena and events the historian in the 1850s possessed the empirical tools handed down by utilitarianism. Furthermore, the liberal orientation of British politics and the radical philosophy propounded by eminent figures, like Bentham and John Stuart Mill, gave a new shape to the idea of Athens and its political institutions. Shilleto objected vehemently to the radical views expounded in Grote's History and preferred the conservative approach of his predecessors. In Grote, Athenian democracy is glorified and presented as the best political system the world has ever seen. Ancient democracy, he argued in a proper utilitarian spirit, ' attempted to ensure the beneficent direction of the powers of government, well as to

as

Richard Shilleto, Thucydides or Grote? (Cambridge and London, 1851), p. I. John Grote, brother of the historian, called Shilleto's pamphlet, 'in itself worthless', and tried to rescue the 'reputation of our University as a source of intelligent and scholar-like criticism'. See A Few Remarks on a Pamphlet by Mr Shilleto Entitled 'Thucydides or Grote? ' (Cambridge and Oxford, 1851 ), p. I. W. W. Goodwin described Shilleto's work as 'the insolent pamphlet of Mr. Shilleto, who seemed to consider Mr. Grote's classical criticism as a daring trespass of an outsider upon some private property of the University ofCambridge'. See W. W. Goodwin, 'Grote's Greece' ,NorthAmen·can Review, 78 (1854), p. 167. 1

2

I 281

IN DEFENCE OF THE BRITISH CONSTmJTION

break down the monopoly and counteract the sinister interests of the wealthy few'. 3 The so-called 'mixed' Spartan type of political organization is reduced to bare dictatorship, where individual freedom and free inquiry had been deeply suppressed. The British Utilitarians produced a case on behalf of representative government that included the basic characteristics of democracy and which witnessed, in their view, its minimum prototype in ancient Athens. If history could be of any use to contemporary life, then it is to Athens that the liberal Victorian resorted for guidance. In this respect Grote, and other scholars of the same school, were far from approaching Greek history for its own sake. For the eighteenth-century historian Athenian democracy offered an example of mobrule and civil disorder; an example to avoid at all costs. Now it was the utilitarians' tum to challenge the established verdict. During the eighteenth century the history of ancient Greece had no appeal to the interest of the general public. It is noteworthy that the British universities showed little interest in the history of the ancient world until the time Julius Charles Hare and Bishop Connop Thirlwall, colleagues at Cambridge, introduced the recent and copious German scholarship. The field of ancient history had been occupied by amateurs, like the poet Oliver Goldsmith - a prolific author on a variety of subjects - or retired officials, as the case of Mitford testifies. 4 It was a common interest inspired by contemporary events that urged those men to deal with antiquity. Prior to the French revolution the precise source of their interest was fear of constitutional anomaly. In terms of interpretation, this accounts for their persistence in comparing the ancient Greek constitutions with the British system of government. The Greek republic, they considered, did not last because power went to the hands of the ignorant and indigent. Having this historical paradigm in mind, the British politician should be alerted to the possibility of an unequal distribution of political influence, especially when the greatest part goes to the king. In the course of the revolution in France, and shortly afterwards, they felt that the imminent danger to encounter was democracy itself. For the British historians of the eighteenth century an investigation into the nature and background of Greek politics could have been worthless had it not succeeded in conducting the reader to a wiser and better political awareness. To write a history of ancient politics involved, in effect, the propagation of a true code of political morality. This piece of work examines critically the debate over Athenian democracy in the late eighteenth century down to the 1850s in Britain, and brings to light some literary sources heretofore neglected. It is shown that contemporary political circumstances had a formative effect upon historical enquiry in terms of interpretation. The gradual development of the scholarly controversy over BL Add. MS 29,520, fol. 204. See M.L. Clarke's candid remarks on Goldsmith's amateurism in his now classic book Greek Studies in England, 1700-1830 (Cambridge, 1945}, p. 103. 3

4

I 282 Athenian democracy throughout the period we examine is arguably analogous to the development of British political thought itself.

I The eighteenth-century historians of Greece largely incorporated in their works the judgment passed on Athenian democracy by the ancient thinkers. The prominent historians and philosophers of the fifth and fourth centuries BC, with the exception of Herodotus, were bitterly hostile to demokratia because under it, they assumed, the populace enjoyed excessive advantages. The poor gave rise to intellectual mediocrity and moral degeneration; they frustrated the development of a noble spirit, and subdued the rich under the pretension of advancing a national policy. 5 Inability in politics had been thus inextricably linked with poverty. Plato and Aristotle exposed philosophically the harmful effects of the rule of the demos: democracy contradicted the cardinal aim of political life which was, they believed, to make the citizens virtuous (agathous politas). 6 To examine the form of government normatively, that is to say by its ability to promote an ultimate moral goal in society, refers to a much earlier political understanding, but historians were content simply to reaffirm the verdict of the ancient thinkers to the effect that democracy leads inevitably to political instability and social injustice. In this context, they presented Athens as the primary example of chaotic and disorderly political organization, associated with personal insecurity. 7 The tendency to embody political discussion in Greek historiography is distinctly represented in the works of Temple Stanyan and Edward Wortley Montagu, who first claimed that exploring Greek political history could be a noble task if it provides the perennial lessons of how to secure the preservation of liberty through a balanced constitution. A close study of the history and destiny of Athens in particular, could illustrate how a people possessing a disproportionate political controlled the state to constitutional crisis and eventually cause its dissolution. That the history of Athens should be primarily read for contemporary instruction was emphasized by Montagu in these words: Athens ... by her fall, has left us some instructions highly useful for our present conduct. Warned by her fate we may learn, that the most effectual method which a bad minister can take, to tame the spirit of a brave and free people, and to melt them down to slavery, is to promote luxury, and encourage and diffuse a taste for publick diversions ... That there cannot be a more

5 See Thucydides, History ofthe Peloponnesian War, VIII. 48; Aristophanes, Knights, 735; [Xen.], Athenaion Po/iteia, I. 4-9; !socrates, Areopagiticus, 50-55; Plato, Gorgias, 515 E.7-9. 6 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1099b30-33. 7 See F.M. Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (London, 1981 ), p. 189.

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certain symptom of the approaching ruin of a State than when a firm adherence to party is fixed upon as the only test of merit. 8 The 'mob government' of Athens, according to Montagu, became gradually, but steadily, the seat of faction and civil dissension, a result to be expected considering the unwise compliance of eminent politicians with the people's wishes. A deplorable example is provided by Solon who had committed a fatal mistake in entrusting the supreme power 'to the giddy and fluctuating populace' and to 'factious Demagogues' .9 Stanyan likewise censured Solon's legislative policy which was directed to suit the 'capricious' temper of the Athenian mob that lacked moral political temper. 10 The state was thus disintegrated into rival factions yearning for political power and ready to utilize whatever means to attain their objectives. 11 These historians concluded their works by presenting what they saw as an indispensable contrast: 'The British constitution', Montagu declared, 'as settled at the revolution, is demonstrably, far preferable to, and better formed for duration, than any of the most celebrated Republicks of antiquity'; he added prophetically that 'if Britain follows the way of Athens it soon will have to face the same fate' . 12 Stanyan praised the British constitution on the grounds that, 'as an Englishman', he could not resist 'the temptation of saying something in preference of our own, which is certainly the nearest to perfection'. Liberty, he argued, 'is better secured to us, than it could be in any of the republicks of Greece, or in any of those regal governments in Europe' . 13 The first historians who dealt with the ancient world in a more reliable and scholarly way, producing massive works on the subject, were William Mitford and John Gillies, the Royal Historiographer of Scotland. Mitford, Gibbon's contemporary, was the most influential anti-democratic historian, whose work, imbued with a firm belief in the excellence of the British constitution, instructed generations of students. 14 Their works are equally pervaded by a distinct feeling of the political significance of Greek history, which, they believed, could throw light upon modem events, and become an example to their contemporaries. 'A Grecian history', wrote Mitford, 'and indeed any history perfectly written ... but especially a Grecian history perfectly written, should be a political institute 8 E. W. Montagu, Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Antient Republicks. Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain (London, 1760), p. 144. 9 Ibid., pp. 80, 84-5. 10 T. Stanyan, The Grecian History. From the Original of GREECE, to the Death of PHILIP of MACEDON (London, 1781 ), I, pp. 180-l. 11 See also Oliver Goldsmith, Grecian History (London, 1774), I, p. 227. 12 Montagu, Reflections, p. 151 and p. 388. 13 Stanyan, Grecian History, II, Preface.

14 Grote himself surely made his first acquaintance with Greek antiquities from Mitford, and his influence on him might have been significant. Early manuscript notes show that Grote was somewhat critical of Athenian democracy. See BL Add. MS 29,520, especially fols. 25-6, 34-5, 92-3.

I 284 for all nations' . 15 The abundance of analogies between the recorded experience of Athenian politics and contemporary Britain found in their compositions makes it plain enough that the two historians worked under the deep impression created by the events of the French Revolution and American affairs. 16 Not surprisingly, their narrative histories of ancient Greece turned out to be lengthy encomiums on the British type of government and the inimitable virtues of its institutional life. Gillies, who characteristically dedicated his work to King George III, referred emphatically to the 'dangerous turbulence of Democracy', as well as to the 'incurable evils inherent in every form of Republican policy'. 17 The Athenian democracy provided a first-class exemplification of the devastating effects ofthe 'tyrannical' rule of the mob. Mitford did not judge it inappropriate to praise, in the heart of his narrative, the 'harmonious' British constitutional monarchy, concluding that 'we cannot consider, without wonder, that an order of things, apparently the most natural, as well as the most beneficial, never subsisted in any country but our own'. England, he went on, through its advantageous constitution, had always avoided the pernicious consequences of internal fermentation which had destroyed Athens and Rome. 18 From the early times of Pericles the democratic form of government became excessively oppressive and fostered a disruptive crisis in social and moral life. Pericles should incur the blame of the historian of politics for his imprudent advocacy of the people's privileges against the rich and noble: he embraced not only the interests, but adopted the capricious passions, of the multitude; cherishing their presumption, flattering their vanity, indulging their rapacity, gratifYing their taste for pleasure without expense. 19 Likewise, Mitford maintained that the rich in Athens were subjected to gross ingratitude and injustice, and he felt no hesitation to argue that it 'was as dangerous to be rich under the Athenian democracy as under the Turkish despotism', since every political decision depended upon the prevalent passion among the 'indigent multitude' .20 Democracy for the Athenians was simply W. Mitford, History of Greece (4 vols., London, 3rd edn., 1808), II, p. 529. Mitford did not scruple to assert that 'what has been passing in France may tend to illustrate Grecian history'. See, Mitford, History, II, p. 525. Similarly, Mitchell argued that a French mob might witness in the Athenian populace their own 'frivolity without [their] good breeding'; A.M. Mitchell, The Comedies of Aristophanes (London, 1820), 15

16

I, p. cl.

17 J. Gillies, The History of Greece (London, 1792), I, p. iii. It might be interesting to note that Temple Stanyan dedicated his own work to Lord Somers, an activist during the Glorious Revolution. 18 Mitford, History, II, pp. 526-7; see also, ibid., III, p. 102, and Mitford's comparison of the English judicial system with the 'imperfect' and 'tyrannical' Athenian. 19 Gillies, History, II, pp. 97-8. 20 Mitford, History, III, p. 21. Similarly Thomas Mitchell, who admired Mitford 's achievement, argued that the daily business of the courts of justice enabled the poor to

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another name for intemperance and lawlessness, and the word 'isonomia' merely implied moral irresponsibility, and the power of doing what one pleased. 21 It seems that both historians perceived no essential difference between the character and motives of the Athenian democrats and the French rebels. Mitford's profound hostility to democracy drove him to an extravagant praise of the tyranny of the Thirty in Athens. It is not surprising that he inserted long passages of eulogy to Philip of Macedonia, the 'enlightened despot' and 'the popular King of a free people', but his idea to write the apology of the Persian type of government which, under Xerxes, appeared to him 'mild and liberal', must have astonished even his more conservative readers. 22 Even in ancient times, however, human wisdom produced a pattern of political rule which, despite its imperfection, stood in agreeable opposition to the idea of an all-powerful popular sovereignty. The eighteenth-century historians described approvingly 'that wonderful phenomenon in politics and in the history of humanity, the Spartan System', and contrasted it with democracy, 'a form of government so intrinsically disposed to irregularity' .23 They reckoned that in Sparta political influence had been regularly distributed between the ephors (oligarchy or aristocracy), the kings (monarchy), and the assembly (democracy), and such distribution was comparable only to the British 'mixed' constitution. Goldsmith, drawing the parallel between the two constitutions, commented on the Spartan laws, and argued that the division of political power 'served as a check upon both, and kept the state balanced in tranquility' .24 Lycurgus' policy to blend together what he found best in every kind of government was conducive to the public good, and further it tended to inspire love of virtue and moderation. Stanyan had earlier argued that a Spartan under the Lycurgean constitution approached Christian morality. The balance of this admirable constitution, he professed, get an easy salary, 'offering themselves as infonners. as witnesses, or as judges; and the idle and the ingenious found in them a perpetual source of amusement'. See T. Mitchell, 'Greek Courts of Justice', Quarterly Review, 33 ( 1826), p. 354. 21 Mitford, History, III, p. 477. See also, ibid., I, p. 376; II, pp. 449,517, 536; III, p. 102. A.M. Mitchell similarly pointed to the tyranny of the Athenian mob - 'an imperious and ignorant rabble'. See Mitchell, Comedies of Aristophanes, I, pp. cxxi, cxlii, ex!. It was customary among the British translators of Aristophanes, who was generally praised for his honest patriotism, to write a preliminary discourse warning the reader of the evils of democratic policy. See besides Mitchell, C.A. Wheelwright, The Comedies of Aristophanes (Oxford, 1837), pp. ix-xii, p. xvi, and B.B. Rogers, Aristophanes, 'The Clouds' (Oxford, London and Cambridge, 1852), Preface. 22 Mitford, History, III, p. 226; IV, p. 415 and p. 621. Philip was presented as an enlightened despot and a model of princely clemency and disinterested virtue. 23 Ibid., I, p. 198 and p. 282. 24 Goldsmith, Grecian History, I, p. 20. See also Charles Rollin (a French historian very popular in England), The Ancient History (London, 1813), II, pp. 381-7.

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was held for the most part so equal, that the supreme authority did not degenerate into fierceness and tyranny, nor popular liberty start out into licentiousness and rebellion. And it is imputed to this medium betwixt an excessive subjection, and an excessive freedom, that Sparta was so long preserved from those domestic dissensions, which harrassed her neighbours.25 Historians saw in the Spartan model, which was proved fit for long duration, an early, though unfinished, copy of the British constitution - a constitution not open to such destructive rebellions as those which had been taking place in France. In short, the Lycurgean constitution seemed to have something of the British political wisdom. It might be argued that Gillies and Mitford accepted many ofMontesquieu's political conceptions to mould their own historical interpretation. The idea of the republican failure, implied in the term 'democratic evils', is borrowed mostly from The Spirit of the Laws. The Athenians, according to these historians, understood liberty to mean independence and self-rule unconstrained by any legal provision. Their conception of liberty had no resemblance whatsoever to British constitutional liberty. For Montesquieu constitutional liberty (which, he believed, the British citizen enjoyed) involved the rule of law instead of the supremacy of personal passion and the impact of social customs. 26 Ancient democracy had been exceptionally fragile because its institutional structure did not guarantee property, nor did it deter popular violence. The best form of government should be able to protect its citizens by legal means, but also ensure the free expression of conflicting interests. Britain, through the separation of powers, secured effectively the true liberty of the individual. Historians like Stanyan and Montagu were alarmed at the possibility of a constitutional imbalance, created by the king's (George III) political manoeuvres. Their narrative histories were designed, under the circumstances, to impart political caution. In 1770 Edmund Burke felt the same threat to England's liberties, as shown in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents. It is not accidental that Burke, himself, attacked vigorously the 'popular Government' of Athens. The Athenians, he asserted, were' forgetful of all Virtue and pub lick Spirit, and intoxicated with the Flatteries of their Orators' .27 Athens had been eventually destroyed because faction and internal conflict poisoned civil society. An unequal political control secured to the king of England would have resulted in civil dissension, and political societies thus divided are destined to perish. The main assumptions of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France found their equivalent, under the veil of history, shortly after the 25 Stanyan, Grecian History, l, p. 95 and pp. 85-7. See also Montagu, Reflections, pp. 72-3; and Mitford, History, I, pp. 200-21. 26 Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, XI. 3, 6, 13. 27 Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 38-9.

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revolution, in the works examined here. Burke suggested that nature gave rise to inequality; the French Revolution challenged natural inequality and therefore threatened the foundations of civil society. Mitford and Gillies combined Montesquieu's theoretical exaltation of the British mixed constitution with Burke's distress about the French events. The history and example of Athenian democracy provided the means to particularize conservative political propositions. The works of Sir William Young, Sir William Drummond and Edward Lytton Bulwer, do not reflect a strong anti-democratic bias. These scholars, however, did not contribute significantly to a fresh historical understanding inasmuch as the tenor and narrative of their works were commonly designed to answer contemporary political questions. All of them were, besides, active politicians, and that may help to illuminate the rationale of their special interest in the history of Athenian politics. Young, an MP in the Whig interest, published The Spirit of Athens in 1777. 28 As he confessed from the outset, his determination to present the history of Athens was formed under the conviction that its arts, science, liberty and empire, as well as the struggles and intrigues of parties and of popular leaders, rendered the subject peculiarly British. Young apparently conceived of a parallel political context between Athens and Britain. The crucial issue was to elaborate the means by which Britain could avoid sharing the Athenian destiny. His work was a declared attempt to 'rouse public principles and public virtue, whilst I trace the history of a great and free people; and to excite political caution, whilst I conjoin causes and effects' .29 Drummond, who was an MP in the Tory interest, wished that his historical undertaking might not be considered 'trivial or useless'; the subject per se, he explained, might be insignificant, but it is worth trying to extract from it fundamental truths of law and government. Drummond spoke with admiration of Spartan manners and daily life, and his work constituted in fact a pamphlet expounding his political theory which is a determined vindication of the 'mixed' British constitution. The government of Sparta, he argued, 'excelled all the republics of Greece in the distribution of the civil power. Being a government completely mixed, it displayed the advantages of each separate portion' .30 Drummond's investigation into Athenian politics was, however, purposefully narrow and it did not extend beyond the Solonian constitution. It is more than likely that he considered the Cleisthenian reforms (as well as the formal restriction of the administrative power of the Areopagus initiated by Ephialtes) detrimental to the original constitution, as it unsettled the traditional balance. The Spirit ofAthens was translated into German and published at Leipzig in 1777. 'These are matters of reflection which I have considered as deeply interesting to a British reader'. See Sir William Young, The History ofAthens (London, 3rd edn., 1804 (the first edn. as The Spirit ofAthens)), pp. viii-ix and p. 138; similarly, W. Drummond, A Review of the Governments of Sparta and Athens (London, 1794), pp. iii-iv. 30 Drummond, A Review, p. 61; see also ibid., pp. 56--60. 28

29

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Despite his bias Drummond, under the influence of Montesquieu's political sociology, was generally disinclined to condemn Athenian political life, for he recognized that civil laws ought to be so adapted as to correspond to the character of the people for whom they are enacted. Solon and Lycurgus promoted legal and constitutional reform of the sort they had deemed of unique suitability to prevalent customs, minds and the temperament of their people. 31 Young had given a sympathetic account of Athens which became gradually less appreciative in the course of the French Revolution. In the preface of the second edition of his work, Young thought it proper to defend himself against those who called 'the author of the History of Athens ... the strongest advocate for the republican system'. He acknowledged that: [he avowed] ... a predilection for the republican system, concentrating my regard to the liberties of the people, with that, to a form of government which dispenses and protects those liberties, - in the contemplation of such Republican constitution of state, as is actually existing in Great Britain ... When I state our British government to be republican, I refer to the ancient sense of the word, and to the definition of Aristotle [i.e. a mixed constitution].32 Young apparently sought to conceal his liberal attitude by associating, quite oddly, Athenian democracy with the British system of government. His effort was theoretically unique: civil liberty, he understood, consists in personal security, rights and property. The British citizen enjoys positive civil liberty and so did the Athenian. Athens, under the wise rule of Pericles, was the state best calculated for general happiness; on a like principle, Britain is by far the best modem state if the interest of all collectively is the ultimate judging criterion. 33 Bulwer, the novelist, did not discern in Athens the gross defects of democratic government. It is worth mentioning that Bulwer frequented the utilitarian circle, and Charles Austin had been his contemporary at college. 34 His Athens, Its Rise and Fall remained incomplete because Bishop Thirlwall 's consummate History of Greece made its appearance. The author immediately acknowledged the inferiority of his own production and ceased further writing. Bulwer recognized that the history of the Greek Republics 'has been too often corruptly pressed into the service of heated political partisans', and he wished his readers to )I

32

Ibid., p. 187. Young, History of Athens, pp. xiii-xiv. Having in mind the revolution in France

which 'hath given birth to a tyranny of such atrocious nature', Young concluded that 'the people collectively are ever the most dangerous instruments of the best intentions', ibid., pp. xi, xiii. n Ibid., p. 99. 34 He was also a member of the debating society formed by J.S. Mill in I 825. See L. Stephen, 'Bulwer, E.L.', Dictionary ofNational Biography (London, I 893), XXXIV, pp. 382-3; and J.S. Mill, Autobiography, ed. Jack Stillinger (London and Oxford, I 97I ), pp. 76, I I9.

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acknowledge that 'whatever [his] own political code, as applied to England, [he has] nowhere sought knowingly to pervert the lessons of the past to fugitive interests and party purposes' .35 Bulwer's political theory, though different from old-fashioned toryism, was never of the sort the Radicals expounded. He therefore joined the Conservatives, and in 1852 was elected MP for Hertfordshire. The conclusion he reached to the effect that the ephors in Sparta acted as the representatives of the people, and thus they should be seen in the light of the theory of representative government, was a characteristic novelty, peculiar to his political ideas. 36 Further, wavering between conservatism and reform Bulwer went on to acknowledge the historical necessity of the tyrannies in ancient Greece. It should be observed, however, that notwithstanding his theoretical limitations, Bulwer anticipated to some extent Grote in defending the Athenian empire, and followed Young in recognizing the positive role of ostracism. Bulwer wrote the best encomium of Athens till then known: the life of Athens, he stated, 'became extinct, but her soul transfused itself, immortal and immortalizing, through the world' .37 Bulwer's interests were, however, mostly literary and, like Drummond, he did not expand on the reforms introduced by Cleisthenes, nor did he appreciate his political reforms. Clearly, it appears that the history of Greece in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Britain had been treated as a means of advancing certain political views, and mainly those of a conservative character. Historians like Mitford and Gillies were unquestionably familiar with ancient sources, but their prejudice against democracy in general proved to be highly detrimental to a fair historical criticism. Evidently they wrote under the impact of contemporary preconceptions, and they made no effort to understand the standards of Greek morals and politics. Democracy appeared to them capricious and tyrannical, and their admiration was reserved for the British constitution. If they wrote the history of ancient Athenian democracy it was particularly in order to condemn the idea of democracy. The application of the democratic principle of government appeared to them as the exact equivalent of mob rule and terror. The rule of the demos was considered anarchical and the rule of envy and passion. Democracy ignored the ranks of society: it meant conflict between the lower and upper classes. Their works were understandably acceptable during the period of anti-revolutionary feeling. On the other hand, writers like Young and Bulwer cannot properly be called historians. Their defence of Athens had been motivated by a vague reverence for the Greek spirit of liberty, but they never made a comprehensive attempt to conceive the limits and theoretical implications of this spirit, as well as to explore its genuine historical background. Speaking of those historians J.S. Mill, who himself, however, called the Spar35

36 37

E.L. Bulwer, Athens, Its Rise and Fall (London, 1837), I, p. viii. Ibid., I, pp. 208 and 256-7. Ibid., p. 356.

I 290 tans the 'hereditary Tories and Conservatives of Greece' ,38 remarked that they 'have started with what it is scarcely injustice to call, no distinct conception whatever of the general state ofthings in Greece, the opinions, feelings, personal relations, and actions, habitual to persons individual or collective, whom they are writing about' .39 But by the time Mill wrote this sentence the Radical movement, administered in the main by the enthusiastic disciples of Bentham, won great victories in public affairs, notably the Abolition of Slavery and the Reform of the Poor Law, in 1833 and 1834. The Philosophic Radicals, as they are generally known, were men of eminence who aspired to reform society not only politically but also intellectually. To join together classical humanism with the radical scientific rationalism of their era was among their emerging priorities. It is not unrelated to this objective that they conceived of Athenian democracy in a fundamentally unconventional way, testing the reliability of older testimony. The moral and practical lessons ingrained in the history of Athenian democracy, unblemished by the traditional misconceptions, could have profoundly assisted the theoretical justification of their revolutionary aspirations. Earlier authors paid little attention to evidence, and as the Radicals were men of a practical tendency, hostile to unverified assertions, they found it easy to discredit their arguments.

II James Mill felt that there was a need for a comprehensive survey of the social and political history of Greece that could expose critically Mitford's deliberate inconsistencies. It was during the younger Mill's education that James Mill handed Mitford's voluminous work to his son, duly warning him of his prejudices.40 George Grote, however, a devoted utilitarian, banker and energetic politician, was the one who embarked on the task of composing a history of Greece. Yet his seat in parliament did not leave him much free time, and systematic writing was postponed until he retired from political life in 1841. In the meantime, Connop Thirlwall, who had been a school-fellow of Grote at Charterhouse and then a Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, Cambridge, produced the first major work in English that dealt with ancient Greece in a comprehensive and critical way. Thirlwall was neither a utilitarian nor a politician. Thus his methodology and approach naturally mark a departure from the prevalent model of a politically-oriented historiography. Thirlwall worked under the influence of German classical scholars and representatives of Romantic hermeneutics, like Schlegel, Niebuhr and Schleiermacher, and his History 38 J.S. Mill, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, Collected Works, ed. J.M. Robson, XI (Toronto, 1978), p. 303. 39 J.S. Mill, Newspaper Writings, Collected Works, ed. A.P. Robson and J.M. Robson, XXV (Toronto, 1986), p. 1159. 40 Mill, Autobiography, p. 9.

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incorporated much of their achievements. The manner of historical criticism encapsulated in his work was shaped with the aid of the romantic philosophy of history and his proclaimed Anglicanism. In investigating the ancients Thirlwall, though not determined to cut altogether the tie with the traditional interpretation, did not subscribe to the narrow ideological outlook of earlier attempts, thus contributing an account of Athenian democracy significantly improved as far as historical precision is concerned. His arguments were moderate and his style refined; but to some extent they lacked decision. When dealing with controversial issues, such as those related to Athenian democracy, Thirlwall displayed an unusual sense of proportion and neutrality that saved him from the common charge of partisanship, though not from inconsistent argumentation. The new historians had to cope with a number of issues raised by earlier writers. Was Athenian democracy the most corrupt regime of antiquity, as it had been represented? Does democracy coincide with anarchy? What was the function of the demagogues and the sophists in the social context of the democratic constitution? Were they intrinsically depraved and unprincipled as portrayed earlier? Does self-rule under a liberal (by implication) form of government lead inescapably to faction and its natural concomitants, i.e. political weakness and social insecurity? Or are they safety-valves for the maintenance of a stable democratic life? There was a wide spectrum of key issues to consider which evidently demanded works of a scope not confined within the strict boundaries of historiography. For most nineteenth-century scholars the historical phenomenon was unintelligible without the aid of political theory. The past should be seen as an amalgam of facts and ideas: neither can be understood apart from the other. Thirlwall pointed out that the usual 'declamation on the jealous, cruel, and faithless temper of democratical despotism' was utterly valueless. 41 Such an argument, he claimed, is historically invalid to the extent it ignores the fact that cases of atrocity and actions morally detestable occurred under any form of government. Thirlwall was not inclined to vindicate explicitly Athenian democracy, but at least he was able to rebut the unqualified assertion that political misbehaviour was peculiar to democracy. On one occasion he went further, claiming that democracy might be a better form of government than oligarchy, when the interests of foreign countries are taken into account. Speaking of the Spartan empire, which replaced the rule of Athens over its subject-allies, he confessed that 'the dominion of an oligarchy might be still more oppressive to its foreign dependents than that of a democracy' .42

41 C. Thirlwall, History of Greece (London, 1837), III, p. 456 n. (italics in the original). 42 Ibid., V, p. 155.

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Bishop Thirlwall worked in a transitional period of Greek historiography, and his History served as the bridge between the eighteenth-century outlook and the nineteenth-century rehabilitation of Athens. His calm and symmetrical narrative paved the way for the reappraisal of Athenian democracy and its surrounding institutions. Let us consider a few typical instances of his neutrality. Thirlwall's History provides a concise theoretical justification of the function of demagogues in Athens, combined with a rigid scepticism of their tactics. Thirlwall acknowledged that Cleon had been unfairly treated by Thucydides, but he did not hesitate, like earlier historians, to call him a 'boisterous, impudent, dishonest, ferocious' demagogue. 43 His account of the Athenian character affords another specimen of his 'middle' position: if the Athenian citizen, he contended, was 'fickle, passionate, often unjust. .. [he] was still always capable of mercy and pity; a compound of generosity and meanness, and of numberless other contrasts'. 44 In considering Socrates' fate he claimed that when the old sage was accused a spirit of intolerance prevailed at Athens, though he added that taking into account the peculiar ideas of the philosopher it is much more surprising that he 'should have been so long spared'. 45 Thirlwall, always cautious, nevertheless revealed signs of his political conviction when he suggested that the ruinous predominance of the demagogues in Athens could have been prevented by means of reforming the courts of justice, and by this he meant to 'give property so much weight . . . as would have sufficed to counterbalance the influence of mercenary motives. Another safeguard against popular levity would have been obtained, if the qualification required for admission to the Council had been newly regulated on a like principle' .46 Grote's History of Greece consisted of a complete defence of Athenian democracy based on evidence and critical analysis. 47 Matured in the spirit of utilitarian empiricism Grote followed his mentor, James Mill, who in the History of British India argued that a historian ought to examine 'the whole field of human nature, the whole field of legislation, the whole field of judicature, the whole field of administration, down to war, commerce, and diplomacy' .48 Like Hume, he also doubted whether the mythical past can be Ibid., IV, pp. 214-16 and III, p. 186. Ibid., IV, p. 227. 45 Ibid., VI, p. 273. 46 Ibid., IV, p. 228. 47 Upon the publication of Grote's third volume Thirlwall felt obliged to declare the 'great inferiory of [his J own performance'. Quoted in William Smith, 'George Grote', Quarterly Review, 135 (1873), p. 2. 48 J. Mill, History ofBritish India (London, 1817), I, p. xix. A history of India, argued Mill, to be good for anything, must be 'A Critical History'; 'the man best qualified for dealing with evidence, is the man best qualified for writing the history of India', ibid., pp. x and xiv; similarly G. Grote, 'Fasti Hellenici. The Civil and Literary Chronology of Greece, from the 55th to the !24th Olympiad', Westminster Review, 5 ( 1826), pp. 330-1. 43 44

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legitimately recorded as authentic historical fact. 49 Thus he set out to offer an overall picture of Athenian politics, with moral and political teaching as a necessary supplement to the original narrative. Grote's work on ancient Greek history is notably the largest ever to appear on the subject in English by a single author. As some of Grote's reviewers indicated the historian assumed systematically 'a violent polemical attitude' .50 Such an attitude can be understood on the basis of Grote's original purpose in writing the History, namely to correct the misrepresentations of Mitford. It is true that the Radicals wanted to democratize British political life and they happily welcomed a successful example from the past. Yet it should be recognized that Grote did not ignore systematically the mistakes of Athenian politics. Had he done so the History would have been understandably of no benefit to the Radicals' cause, which was to enhance the standards of civil culture and carry out political reform. In his detailed examination of the trial of the six generals after the battle of Arginusae, Grote acknowledged that the Athenians committed an act of judicial injustice because they temporarily lost their sense of political partnership. This event showed, in Grote's judgment, that the democratic constitution of Athens did not deter its leading men from 'personal and pecuniary corruption'. From this sort of corruption he believed that the oligarch Nikias was a praiseworthy exception. 51 The historian also did not hesitate to eulogize the Spartan general Kallicratidas for his 'pan-hellenic' motivation, and he admitted that considering the character and action of the general, it would have been better for Greece if Sparta had been victor at Arginusae instead of Athens. 52 If earlier historians condemned the Athenians and deprecated their manners it was because their preconceptions did not allow them to conceive the liveliness and vivacity of the Athenian faith in democracy. The average Athenian of the fifth century, according to Grote, preferred to sacrifice his life instead of submitting himself to political servility; the Athenians believed that equality before the law, and unconditional freedom of speech (isonomia and isegoria), constituted the highest contribution of a state towards its subjects. What might have appeared to Mitford as anarchy, for the Athenians constituted the fundamental laws of political existence which safeguarded individual participation in public affairs. 49 See Hurne, History of England (London, 1825), I. p. 13; and Grote, 'Grecian Legends and Early History'. in Minor Works of George Grote, ed. A. Bain (London, 1873), p. 77. 50 See John Anster, 'Grote's Greece', Dublin University Magazine, 45 ( 1855), p. 480; John Stuart Blackie. 'Plato', Edinburgh Essays by Members of the University (Edinburgh, 1857), p. 7, n. 2. 51 G. Grote, History of Greece (London, 1906, in 12 vols., 8th edn. (first edn. 1845-54)), VI, pp. 26,302. 52 Ibid., VIII, pp. 154, 234-5.

I 294 It is not accidental that the sophists, who long suffered the uncritical contempt of historians, found in Grote an enthusiastic advocate. The great humanistic movement of the fifth century BC was, in his judgment, closely connected with the growing democratic sentiment. The sophists taught nothing immoral; they just contributed to the liberal sentiment of their time. They were instructors in rhetoric because persuasion was the only acceptable means of obtaining the consent of the governed. In Sparta, where decisions were enforced by the arbitrary will of an oligarchy, the sophists had no place. The demagogues, like the sophists, being products of political liberty, aided materially the growth of Athenian institutions. They were qualified men, keen to answer the immediate needs of their fellow-citizens, always prepared to defend those who had suffered wrong; and most importantly, they enabled the people to emancipate themselves from the political control of the nobles, who even under a democratic regime were always holders of administrative power. The sophists and the demagogues thus appeared to Grote as natural offsprings of the liberal Athenian society and the democratic constitution. The first directly, the others by example, trained men for the requirements of civil life and fostered mutual respect and toleration. The analogy is obvious. Grote might have drawn the parallel between the sophists of ancient times with the Philosophic Radicals of his era. Both aspired to renew the philosophical aims and to reclaim the true ends of politics. On the other hand, the ancient demagogue resembled in several aspects the modem type of politician. His violent temper and his struggle for power 'are qualities which, in all countries of free debate, go to form what is called a great opposition speaker'. 53 Grote's novel argument on the sophists, as well as the detailed political analysis of the demagogic function, were partly dictated by his desire to give a historical justification of contemporary philosophic radicalism. But what was the impact of certain political institutions upon the character of people? Grote exhaustively explored the institutional framework of Athenian democracy, concluding categorically that democracy cultivated a spirit of tolerance and respect for individual life. Furthermore, democracy preserved and guaranteed private property, and administered justice impartially. The civil virtues it established gave birth to a unique civilization. Earlier historians could not explain how a great civilization flourished in a 'corrupt' regime. Grote argued that the unrivalled preeminence of Athens in philosophy, literature and art was the natural result of its attachment to the idea of freedom and good government. Considering the effect of the popular assemblies on the character of people in ancient democracies, Grote remarked that unobstructed participation in government considerably eased the process of acquiring practical consciousness of individual liability to error. In his Funeral Speech Pericles argued explicitly that in a democratic system of government men were equal before the 53

Ibid., VII, p. 52.

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law in their private pursuit of eudaimonia, respecting and tolerating each other with earnestness and devotion. Democracy, however, still needed institutional means to preserve itself against personal ambition. The safety-valve of democracy was the institution of ostracism. This law deterred fierce and uncontrolled struggle, and created 'constitutional morality', that is to say, willed obedience to the rules of democracy. 54 Ostracism had been highly serviceable to the maintenance of civil peace and security. It was a constitutional safeguard, in a period when the state could not afford the presence of embittered controversies. Earlier historians, by contrast, diagnosed in that institution the incurable ills of democratic folly and jealousy. Athenian democracy, Grote maintained, 'had diffused among the people a sentiment favourable to equal citizenship'; it inculcated upon their character moderation and political morality; it allowed for 'liberty of thought and action ... not merely from excessive restraint of law, but also from practical intolerance between man and man, and tyranny of the majority over individual dissenters in taste and pursuit' .55 A hundred years ago such an exaltation of Athenian democracy would have appeared basically blasphemous. Grote employed a political vocabulary remarkably similar to the utilitarian argument for representative government, especially that put forward by John Stuart Mill in later years. Mill praised the Athenian constitution for affording the individual his due space of action, and freedom to improve his manners and personality. It would be useful to consider, he argued, 'whether we have ... advanced as much beyond the best Grecian model, as might with reason have been expected after more than twenty centuries' .56 Grote not only anticipated much of what Mill subsequently put forward in his On Liberty, but bestowed on Mill's proposals a historical substantiation.

III Grote's work opened new perspectives for the exploration of Greek politics and civilization. 57 It showed that there was another side to the story: a good, liberal Ibid., IV, pp. 324-5 and V, p. 168. Ibid., V, p. 367; VIII, pp. 268-9; VI, p. 181. 56 Mill, Collected Works, XI. p. 313. 57 As Arnalda Momigliano pointed out German professors took Grote's challenge seriously. 'All the German studies on Greek History of the last fifty years of the nineteenth century are either for or against Grote'. See A. Momigliano, George Grote and the Study of Greek History (London, 1952), p. 13. Grote's History was translated in France by A.L. de Sadous, 1864-7; in Germany by N.N.W. Meissner, 1850-5; in Italy, by 0. Colonna, 1855-7. It was also published in America. Extracts of the History were published in Griechische Mythologie und Antiquitiiten, ed. T. Fischer (Leipzig, !856-60), and Leben und Charakter-Bilder der Griechischen Staatsmiinner und Philosophen (1859). Hermann Mi.iller-Striibing thought it worthy of Grote's contribution to devote 735 pages to defending the historian's position against some of his German critics. See H. MUller54

55

I 296 and progressive Athenian society instead of the wretched and unstable government depicted by earlier writers. From the mid-eighteenth century down to Grote's period, Athenian democracy was made a source of either negative or positive reference. During this period the world witnessed the outburst of two great revolutions as well as momentous constitutional reforms, which partly explain the character of historical criticism fixed on democratic Athens. In Britain the new liberal current, projected by Benthamism, promoted political reform through many struggles and disappointments. Athenian democracy, totally disapproved of by authors hostile to the French Revolution and afraid of its effect on British politics, was to undergo a full rehabilitation by a keen, radical, member of parliament. With the exception of Thirlwall, for none of these authors was Athenian democracy a matter of strictly academic concern. In examining Athenian democracy historians found a convenient channel to articulate their private political preferences and antipathies, thereby accentuating the ideological antagonism of the post-revolutionary age. Shortly before and after the French Revolution Athenian liberalism was totally disapproved of by uncompromising conservative historians. Athenian democracy was deliberately drawn from oblivion only to be set as a constitutional example to avoid. The theory and practice of the British constitution is by contrast declared to be the better safeguard in a period of political uncertainty and constitutional experimentation. On the other hand, the friends of popular liberty saw in Athenian democracy a precious ally from the past. In his ardent admiration of Athens, Grote had been motivated by his keen interest in politics and the Radicals' project of transforming society. The first narrative histories of ancient Greece, despite their shortcomings in form and argument, were received enthusiastically in Germany. Mitford was translated into German in 1800, and his work received the praise of the distinguished historian Arnold Hermann Heeren. Heeren observed that Mitford had been superior in the abundance and authenticity of materials; but Gillies surpassed him in the proper conception of antiquity. 58 The German scholars had indeed created a miracle in Greek studies, but they were mostly preoccupied with the history of literature and art. Winckelmann was a historian of ancient art; Herder set the foundations of Comparative Philology; Heyne examined critically ancient poetry, especially Homer, and became the founder of the scientific treatment of Greek mythology; Wolf with his Prolegomena to Homer gave rise to a great controversy over the unity of Homeric poetry. At the Stri.ibing, Aristophanes und die historische Kritik (Leipzig, 1873). In Greece, Grote was met with the enthusiastic reception of the eminent historian Konstantine Paparregopoulos, lstoria tou Hel/enikou Ethnous (Athens, 1865), I, pp. 40-2. 58 A.H.L. Heeren, A Manual ofAncient History, trans. D.A. Tal boys (Oxford, 1829), pp. 118-19; original in German as Hanbuch der Geschichte der Staaten des Alterthums (Gottingen, 181 0).

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threshold of the nineteenth century there had been, however, nothing of importance on the history of ancient politics. In Britain, in spite of the predominance of political interest in Greek historiography, clearly at the expense of fairness to the spirit of antiquity, historians deserve the credit of being pioneers in this field. Their arguments, poorly supported by historical evidence, or deliberately distorting recorded information, gave an additional incentive to future scholars to develop the subject and prove them wrong. 59 Their verdict against Athenian democracy and their disapproval of the civil virtues it established, prepared the ideological platform on which a stimulating debate would take place in the nineteenth century. The age of Reform could not have accepted uncritically the traditional conception of Athens, nor fail to vindicate accordingly the institutional machinery of democratic government.

59 As Freeman observed, 'Mitford was a bad scholar, a bad historian, a bad writer of English. Yet we feel a lingering weakness for him. He was the first writer of any note who found out that Grecian history was a living thing with a practical bearing'. See E.A. Freeman, 'Grote's History of Greece', North British Review, 25 (1856), p. 143.

II

BISHOP CONNOP THIRLWALL: H ISTORIAN OF ANCIENT GREECE

In works dealing with the reception of the classics the name of Bishop Connop Thirlwall (1797-1875) is, save for a few dry remarks, the least quoted, and his History a/Greece (eight volumes, 1835-1844) the least analyzed. In effect, it seems very likely that the life and work of this outstanding Victorian scholar might have been entirely forgotten had not been resurrected, albeit imperfectly, by John Connop Thirlwall, Jr, in 1936 1. Frank Turner devotes only a couple of brief remarks to Thirlwall, and those as a prelude to his detailed analysis of George Grote's History of Greece. There we simply learn that «Thirlwall was the first British historian to bring the vast accomplishments of German classical scholarship into the service of Greek history»2 . Bishop Thirlwall, according to Turner, wrote from the liberal Anglican view of history, and his impassionate narrative tended to neutralize the major events in Greek history as a source in mid-nineteenth-century ideological debates. The tendency to underrate Thirlwall's place in the history of Greek historiography can be traced to the classic study of George P. Gooch, who bypassed the eight-volume edifice with a less THIRLWALL, Connop Thirlwa!l. Historian and Theologian, London 1936. F.M. TURNER, The Greek H eritage in Victorian Britain, New Haven and London 1981, p. 211. See also pp. 279-83 where Turner discusses Thirlwall's essay on the Hegelian Socrates, inserted in an appendix to the second edition, fourth volume, of the History a/Greece, London 1847. 1 ].C.

2

II 50 than a page commentary. The bishop, Gooch wrote, «reserved in the expression of opinion and lacking colour and enthusiasm» possessed nothing that could appeal to the public: «The faults of the book are negative, not positive. It is almost too impersonal. The actors are a little shadowy, and the drama has the air of having been acted long ago. It was for Grote to bring the Athenian democracy back to life and to rivet the gaze of the world on its aspirations and achievements>). Not surprisingly, Jennifer T. Roberts in her learned Athens on Trial cites Thirlwall several times with the tutelary designation «Grote's friend», naturally soon to dismiss him because «he lacked Grote's spark, and so it was ultimately the name of Grote that came to be attached to the new valuation of Athenian government and society»4 . Does Thirlwall deserve such a colourless, not to say condescending, treatment by modern scholars? Ironically, the historian himself can be partly held responsible for this profound indifference to his achievements. On the appearance of Grote's two first volumes he dispatched a letter to his old school fellow at Charterhouse, in which he pointed out the «admiration and delight» with which he had read them, being conscious of the «great inferiority of my own performance». This generous profession of inferiority is interestingly followed, however, by a reference to «the very unfavourable condition of a gradually enlarged plan and other adverse circumstances under which it [the History] was undertaken and prosecuted». All things considered, Thirlwall declared his satisfaction >. His opponents circulated a placard displaying Mill's «blasphemous» sentence, namely that if he had to go to hell because he could not worship a Being who was not good in the sense in which he applied that term to his fellow creatures, then, rather than pay that homage where it was not due, to hell he would go. Interestingly, Thirlwall published a letter in the «Spectator>> of 17 June 1865 in which he maintained that Mill's «was the utterance of a conviction in harmony with the purest spirit of Christian morality». 11 A Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke, London 1825, translator's name omitted.

II 56 in the camp of modern sceptics who minimized the supernatural basis of religion by pleading for free thought and impartial criticism in the study of the sacred writings. In October 1827 Thirlwall abandoned legal work and returned to Cambridge in order to retain his expiring fellowship. He took deacon's orders in the same year and was ordained priest the next. His entrance into the Church was, under the circumstances, rather motivated by anxiety to secure a material refuge for his intellectual pursuits, but once a clergyman he was committed to his parochial duties. At Trinity, Thirlwall became tutor and classical lecturer and was appointed examiner for the classical tripos. In 1828 the first volume of Niebuhr's Romische Geschichte appeared in English, a joint effort of Thirlwall and Hare, but after the publication of the second volume in 1832 other interests intervened and they published no more. Instead, the two scholars launched «The Philological Museum», which expired just two years after its first issue for want of subscribers, in 1833. The «P.M.» was then a pioneering magazine exclusively devoted to philology and classical literature. Thirlwall himself contributed among other minor pieces a lengthy Essay on the Irony of Sophocles, and a translation of Schleiermacher's essay On the Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher, a provocative piece that appealed widely to contemporary liberal classicists12. Thirlwall's respect for Niebuhr was predictable: with his insistence on testing the credibility and foundations of historical evidence and legendary narratives, as well as with his detailed analysis of the social institutions and economic factors that shaped the historical destiny of Rome, the Prussian scholar appealed largely to liberal-minded scholars, and of course no less so to Thirlwall who by the 1830s must have already embarked on his preparations for a history of ancient Greece.

12 Essay on the Irony a/Sophocles, «Philological Museum» 1, 1831, pp. 483-537; On the Worth o/ Socrates as a Philosopher, 2, 1833, pp. 538-555.

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A protest against promulgating such a «pernicious example» in England prompted Hare and Thirlwall to publish a decisive and deeply caustic response 13 . Thirlwall was found again in the midst of a polemical opposition, still simply a mild prelude to the reaction raised against him for his role in the movement for the admission of dissenters to degrees and for the abolition of compulsory chapel. As is known, the House of Commons passed in 1834 a bill to admit dissenters to university degrees. The majority of Cambridge scholars considered such a measure subversive of the universities as ecclesiastical establishments, and waged, in accordance to the typical reaction of the age, a war of spirited pamphlets. Thomas Turton (1780-1864), Professor of Divinity and later bishop of Ely, published a paper in which he defended the long-established practice by showing that, on the basis of measures guaranteeing the commonality of religious conviction among students, Cambridge was much more successful as an educational institution than others lacking such measures 14 . Reservations set aside, Thirlwall got involved and published a pamphlet, dated 21 May 1834, entitled Letter to the Rev. Thomas Turton, on the Admission of Dissenters to Academical Degrees. Thirlwall argued that objecting to the admission of non-conformists at Cambridge was hypocritical inasmuch as little of a theological or religious character was taught at the colleges. Going a step further, he attacked the futility of compulsory chapel service, recommending that it should be omitted, except when voluntary. Five days later the Master of Trinity, Christopher Wordsworth, asked Thirlwall to resign his tutorship. What was worse, Cambridge scholars (among them friends like

13 HARE and THIRLWALL, A Vindication o/ Niebuhr's History of Rome /rom the charges of the Quarterly Reviewer, Cambridge 1829. See especially Thirlwall's caustic «Postscript». 14 See T. TURTON, Thoughts on the Admission a/Persons, without regard to their Religious Opinions, to certain degrees in the Universities of England, Cambridge 1834.

II 58 William Whewell) united against him forwarding circulars and publishing fiery pamphlets. Meanwhile this memorable dispute crossed the borders of the historic university. Liberals, radicals and utilitarians applauded Thirlwall's courageous stance, especially considering the fact that Tractarianism had already begun spreading a reactionary tone in the atmosphere of Victorian religious debates. Thirlwall's resignation from Trinity opened a new chapter in his life. In November 1834 Lord Brougham offered him the crown living of Kirby Underdale in Yorkshire. His forward-looking conduct in Cambridge was moreover rewarded by his election to the Senate of the University of London, the institution founded by the circle of Jeremy Bentham to promote secular education. At about the same time, Thirlwall embarked on writing a history of Greece for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia of Dionysius Lardner. Conforming to the aims and scope of the Cyclopaedia, Thirlwall had initially agreed to write two or three volumes of popular narrative, but dealing with the complexities and requirements of his subject within such a narrow space proved not feasible. This is the «unfavourable condition of a gradually enlarged plan» of his reference in the above-cited letter to Grote. The discerning reader of the History can hardly fail to observe that the historian changed his mind about the purpose, structure and philosophy of his work just after narrating the battle of Salamis. Inevitably, however, events up to that time (and great events like the battle of Marathon which always excited feelings of awe amongst philhellenists) are visited summarily and in clear-cut dry statements, something that provoked the most common criticism against the historian's opus. The other «adverse circumstances» under which the history project was undertaken should by now be transparently clear. In 1840 Melbourne, overcoming objections raised against Thirlwall for being a free thinker and heterodox, offered him the bishopric of St. David's in Wales. One observes that, almost paradoxically, whatever Connop seems to have disliked he was eventually forced to face. Despite his hatred of legal studies, he entered Lincoln's Inn; vehemently anticlerical, he took Orders to teach at Cambridge; liberal in poli-

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tics, rationalist and even sceptic in philosophy, and unorthodox in theological issues (member of the modernist Broad Church Movement), he finally abandoned the world of scholarship to become bishop in the National Church. In Wales, and despite his manifold activities, the bishop was not personally popular due to his «icy» character and unconcealed contempt for his flock 15 . As it happened, his thirty-four years of service define a period of ecclesiastical controversies and rapid political change. The Church of England, fueled by doctrinal and ideological disputes, was on the verge of confusion. Virtual seclusion at Abergwili during the years of his episcopate might well have led Thirlwall to distance himself from the seat of controversies, but he never sought to avoid storms. In his eleven triennial Charges Thirlwall emerges as a man who could take the unpopular side without faltering whenever he was convinced of the rightness and efficacy of his position 16 . His

15 There are many anecdotes as well as references to Thirlwall's sarcastic and cold nature. Thomas Carlyle described him as the «most sarcastic, sceptical, but strong-hearted, strong-headed man» he ever met; see J.A. FROUDE, Carlyle in London, New York 1884, Vol. I, p. 41. AUGUSTUS J.C. HARE confessed that he particularly disliked Thirlwall and Whewell, «so icily cold were their manners». The historian, Hare wrote, 12, 1808, p. 480. On Mitford and party historiography during that period see THOMAS PRESTON PEARDON, The Transition in English Historical Writing 1760-1830, Columbia 1933, esp. chap. 3, and TURNER, Greek Heritage, pp.192-204.

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rature, following closely in the tracks of Macaulay's polemic. Grote's «Westminster Review» article of 1826 was supposed to be a review of Henry Pynes Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, but turned into an explicit attack on Mitford. The latter is pronounced absolutely unqualified to present a decent philosophical anatomy of the development of the social and political characteristics of the Greeks, or to discern and analyze the stages in their intellectual evolution. His statements on Athens, according to Grote, were predictably pervaded by strong moral and ideological biases. Far from providing a faithful historical picture of Greek life and politics Mitford simply exposed his Tory prejudices. The need for an enlightened history of Greece is again emphatically reiterated. «Should Grecian history ever be re-written with care and fidelity>>, Grote observed, we venture to predict that Mr. Mitford's reputation ... will be prodigiously lowered. That it should have remained so long exalted, is a striking proof how much more apparent than real is the attention paid to Greek literature in this country; and how much that attention, where it is sincere and real, is confined to the technicalities of the language, or the intricacies of its metres, instead of being employed to unfold the mechanism of society, and to bring to view the numerous illustrations which Grecian phenomena afford, of the principles of human nature2°.

One can imaginatively recreate the lively discussions within the liberal and utilitarian circles about the imperative need for providing an impeccable history of ancient Greece. Such a fertile ground of exemplary political experience and humanistic tradition should not have remained for such a long time the domain of reactionary moralizing ideologues. But who was to embark on this demanding survey? There is ample archival evidence that Grote had been engaged on a history project from the early 1820s. We can presume that Macaulay's devastating critique of Mitford helped to strengthen his commitment 20 G. GROTE, Institutions of Ancient Greece, «Westminster RevieW>> 5, 1826, pp. 330-31.

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to the project, even though his career in Parliament on the Radicals' side would not allow him to prosecute it until 1841. Thirlwall might have had the idea in his mind as early as Grote. But it was a novelist and political reformer who first contested the influence of Mitford: Edward Lytton Bulwer (1803-1873). It is very likely that Bulwer too was inspired towards his project by the utilitarian circle of Charles Austin and James Mill, whom he regulady frequented, as well as by the movement for parliamentary reform. In 1836 the novelist published two large volumes entitled Athens, its Rise and Fall (announced as a four-volume set) - destined, however, to be left incomplete apparently due to the appearance of Thirlwall's work. By dividing Athens into two parts, one historical and the other dealing with arts and literature, Bulwer had already performed a daring innovation. Former historians, almost obsessively preoccupied with political didacticism, were not particularly concerned with the intellectual aspects of Greek civilization. Bulwer's analysis of the constitutional changes in Athens had a good grounding in ancient sources and was an expression of new historical perspectives, but most importantly it was carried out by a scholar sympathetic to ancient liberalism. Solon, in Bulwer's view, confronted an established oligarchy of birth, which he prudently managed to replace with an aristocracy of property. Cleisthenes widened its basis from property to population, and weakened the oppressive influences of wealth, by establishing the ballot. Athens' glory and cultural eminence were rooted in her free constitution, whereas Sparta with its strict authoritarianism contributed nothing to the progress of humankind. Indeed, the «life of Athens became extinct, but her soul transfused itself, immortal and immortalizing, through the world»21 . The reception of Bulwer was fairly positive. The «Spartan tradition» was irreversibly fading away; Mitford's dominance would end soon. (A last attempt at reviving it was made in 1838 by his brother

21

E.L. BVLWER,Athens, its Rise and Fall, London 1837, Vol. I, p. 356.

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Lord Redesdale and William King who undertook to offer a revised edition of the voluminous work. The much-celebrated History was finally published in eight volumes, but despite the zeal of its adherents it soon became obsolete.) Daniel Keyte Sandford (1798-1838), Vfofessor of Greek at Edinburgh, praised the exquisite style and the advanced learning exhibited in Athens. Yet Sandford felt constrained to give Bulwer full credit inasmuch as he tended, despite his promises, to treat the Athenians «too tenderly>>. He thus unduly defended their demeanour against their «great deliverers» - Miltiades, Aristides, Themistocles and Cimon. Further, he defended «the shabby policy of Ostracism», a political device directed against individual eminencein effect «a blunt confession of the weakness inherent in democracies»22. By contrast, William Bodham Donne (1807 -1882) praised the novelist for his political insights and ability to value the uniqueness of the Greek experience, and joined him in defending the Athenian people against accusations of ingratitude. Bulwer rightly understood, according to Donne, that ostracism was a lenient form for removing the opponents of democracy. Had it been possible to apply this measure in contemporary political conflicts, Donne remarked, much blood and violence would have been spared23 . Decisively hostile, however, was the «Fraser's» critic who attacked Bulwer on the grounds of becoming the uncritical apologist of an «ill-natured rubble». «But let him not take credit for his impartiality ... , when almost every page displays the cloven foot, and his anxiety to recommend democracy as the form of government the best suited to a people, who in their naval power, mercantile habits, and political institutions, are the very reflection of those who lived in the Piraeus, the Wapping of London, or ascended the stone of the Pnyx, the counterpart of the hustings of Covent Garden» 24 . 22 D.K. SANDFORD, Bulwer's Rise and Fall o/ Athens, «Edinburgh RevieW>> 65, 1837, pp. 162-3, 166-7. 23 W.B. DONNE, The Rise and Fall of Athens, «British and Foreign RevieW>> 7, 1838, pp. 65-6, 73-4. 24 ANON., Bulwer's Athens, «Fraser's Magazine» 16, 1837, p. 348.

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Despite its literary merits and ideological tenor, the work of Bulwer was not exactly what liberal scholars longed for. For his Athens was to a certain degree a blatant and unreserved continuation of partisan historiography. Indeed, to function as a precedent for contemporary emulation, ancient liberalism should have been rehabilitated through a scholarly exploration of Greek history and not through redundant encomia. Bulwer himself seems to have understood the limitations of his plan, and ceased writing. The time was ripe for Thirlwall. The publication of his first volume in 1835 revitalized the long-cherished expectations for a well-documented and sophisticated analysis of the Greek political experience. The more so as he stated clearly from the beginning that his intention was to correct the tendency to interpret Greek history on the basis of ideas never enunciated or practised in the Greek republics and using it «as a vehicle for conveying ... views on questions of modern politics»25 . The liberal utilitarians, and Grote in particular, were aware of Thirlwall's solid academic merits and had every reason to believe that the history of Greece would have been, at last, successfully restored. We can conjecture that Grote might have personally felt some regret for his negligence, inasmuch as he started preparations many years ago, but it .is almost certain that he would set one condition for embarking anew on the history project, namely, the failure of Thirlwall to satisfy the expectations of the Philosophical Radicals.

The History of Greece In approaching his subject, Thirlwall had before him the best German studies of the Altertumswissenschaft as well as whatever scrap of information was then known of the original Greek and Latin sources. Most sources are not cited directly in the text but are discussed, 25

THIRLWALL,

History, Vol. I, p. 403.

II 66 and differences sorted out, in appendices at the end of each volume. In the opening volume Thirlwall's style is heavy and his expression rather arid, wanting in that pictorial vividness which Victorians had learnt to expect from historians of the higher rank. From the primitive history of Greek tribes and their migrations, Thirlwall proceeds to examine at some length the legends of the Heroic Age as well as whatever can be collected from scanty sources about its religion, government and arts. His exposition is careful, distinguishing - in the spirit of Niebuhr between mythical narratives and historical truth, yet not brushing away every single legend as entirely baseless. His methodology in this respect is notably less sceptical than Grote's and more reserved than Clinton's26. Grote refused to recognize the force of «plausible fiction», rejecting altogether the evidence of the legends along with the historical inferences that could be drawn from them. Clinton, Mitford and earlier historians believed in the reality of mythical personages and wrote as if they really had existed. Thirlwall, on the other hand, strove to find the kernel of truth in the guise of poetic imagination, thus adhering to a principle that since then has come to underlie archaeological research. The Homeric world was for him «not a region of enchantment, called into existence by the wand of a magician; it is at once poetical and real»27. In carrying out this early part of his work, the historian soon fell into the storm of the Homeric controversy. Suffice it to mention here that Thirlwall rejected the Wolfian thesis of a multiple authorship of the Iliad (advocated in his famous Prolegomena ad Homerum, 1795), asserting that the Homeric poems had been written down when they were composed instead of several generations later. Most likely, according to Thirlwall, they were products of one poet and were imbued with a premeditated unity of design. At any rate, a pragmatic caution is 26 See H.F. CLINTON, Fasti Hellenici. The Civil and Literary Chronology of Greece from the Earliest Accounts to the Death of Augustus, 3 vols, Oxford 18241830. 27 History, Vol. I, p. 159.

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addressed to readers: as the idea of duplicate authorship was foreign to the ancients, modem readers should be very reluctant to hypothesize on the basis of very doubtful assumptions28 . Over the years many different views on the matter emerged, but today the most popular theory seems to reconfirm Thirlwall's position. If contemporary readers had expected lively accounts of the «glorious battle of Marathon» and the defence of Thermopylae they must have been flatly disappointed. Thirlwall's narrative (perhaps, more correctly, report) is learned and accurate as to the facts but there is no thrill of enthusiasm or any trace of an inclination towards critical interpretation. What is more, the «sober language of historical truth» is called upon to correct and counterbalance earlier romanticized readings of the celebrated battles29 . Nevertheless, Thirlwall's style changes significantly near the end of the second volume: it suddenly becomes more analytical; it no longer gives the impression of merely summarizing facts, and thus obtains strength and vivacity. As the political affairs of Athens and Sparta were fundamental to any history of ancient Greece, Thirlwall devotes the greatest part of his work to their exploration, which he vividly intermingles with the portrayal of leading personages. His treatment of Athens and of the ancient republican ideal is one of the most interesting parts of the History and will largely concern us here. It should be remembered that there was a long-standing idealization of Sparta as the historical analogue, or archetype, of a stable (i.e., «free from change») mixed constitution, whereas Athens embodied the notorious antitype- prone to faction and decadence3°. An exception to the treatment of Sparta as a political ideal a generation before 28 History, Vol. I, pp. 243-48. At the time of writing down his views Thirlwall was already familiar with the works of G.W. NITZSCH, De Historia Homeri, 2 vols, Hannover 1830-1837, and JOSEPH KREUSER, Vor/ragen iiber Homeros and Homerische Rhapsoden, Ki:iln 1833. Both scholars were disposed to revert to the old unitary theory of authorship. 2 9 History, Vol. I, p. 241. 30 See the informative study of ELIZABETH RAwsoN, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought, Oxford 1969.

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Thirlwall was the pro-Athenian essay of Sir William Young (17491815), who was a Member of Parliament in the Whig service between 17 84 and 1806. In his distinctively didactical essay Young eulogized Athens, being convinced that its government aimed at the general happiness and prosperity but not at the expense of personal security, rights or property31 . Thirlwall, in turn, would do his best to avoid extreme statements, apparently unwilling to fall into the sentimentalism of Bulwer or the animus of his influential predecessors. Quite often, however, to the disappointment of radicals and liberals, Athens is submitted to a ruthless criticism on the grounds of its constitutional weaknesses that encouraged an aggressive foreign policy, to the detriment of the interests of the «Greek nation». The transformation of the Delian League, for instance, into an Athenian hegemony was «founded upon wrong and robbery». It is of course true, according to Thirlwall, that «in the account which all nations have to render at the bar of history, there is probably not one which can appear with clean hands to impeach the Athenians on this head»32 . Yet it may be useful to remember that the greatness of Athens rested on «violence and fraud», and that the extravagant pride and confidence in its own fortune accelerated the process of its decline. Conversely, the power exerted by Sparta over her allies was more limited than the Athenian, and rested partly on the national affinity of the members of the confederacy, but still more on the conformity of the oligarchical institutions. On the whole, the Spartan cause was much more popular throughout Greece; thus Sparta, «secure of the loyalty of her own allies, could calmly watch for opportunities of profiting by the disaffection of those of her rival>) 3.

W YOUNG, History of Athens, London 1804, pp. 52, 54. Cf. W. DRUMMOND, A Review of the Governments of Sparta and Athens, London 1794, principally a response to Young's first edition entitled The Spirit of Athens, being a Political and Philosophical Investigation of the History of that Republic, London 1777. 32 History, Vol. III, p. 70. 33 History, Vol. III, p. 120. 31

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The leaders of Athens, Thirlwall argued, were largely responsible for the pathology of social ethos and the shortcomings of her policies. Pericles himself does not escape extensive criticism, although the historian warns the reader that the Athenian statesman was already too harshly judged. In commenting on the fierce intestine rivalries prior to the Peloponnesian war, Thirlwall explained that the major drawback of Pericles' domestic administration was that it tended to «serve no higher end than a temporary gratification of individuals». But a common mistake in recording Athenian history is the proneness to refer all late catastrophic events to the faults of Periclean policy. An impartial historian, Thirlwall asserted, should not blame the Athenian democratic leader for the disastrous developments that followed; though they largely arose out of his political arrangements, those developments were not necessary results of them, and were such as he could not easily have foreseen. Enough has already been said to tempt the reader to place the historian in the camp of politically interested conservative moralists, but that would be overhasty. It must be remembered that Thirlwall's corrosive criticism is levelled at Pericles' alleged failure to consolidate the «common weal»34 . The historian's language cannot fail to remind us of the utilitarian concern for the maximization of communal happiness. In fact, the bishop was particularly interested in the prosperity of the middle classes (or the middle rank of society that embraces people of intellectual merit and moral influence), which in Athens under the tutelary leadership of demagogues had never had the opportunity to develop into a healthy part of the community. Overall, Thirlwall's political philosophy is unmistakably informed by the utilitarian claims for general happiness and the common good, reflecting simultaneously the Radicals' confidence in a prosperous middle class as the stronghold of a democratic society3 5 . Such political thinking is apparently meshed, History, Vol. III, pp. 65-6. See }AMES MILL, Essay on Government [1819], Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, ed. T. BALL, Cambridge 1992, p. 41: «There can be no 34

35

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however, with the ethical concerns and the mild social conservatism of a member of the early group of Broad Churchmen. Thirlwall would revert to Pericles in his analysis of the causes behind the fall of Athens, following its defeat by the Peloponnesians. Indeed, the historian maintains, the principal steps of this «calamitous reverse» can be traced to the policy of Pericles, «though not so as to exclude the operation of causes which no human foresight could have guarded against». One of his measures proved a catalyst in the course of destruction and decay. The changes in the elements of which the assembly was ordinarily composed attracted large parts of the rural population into the city, where no productive employment could be found. Consequently, most of them (formerly prosperous farmers belonging to the middle class) sank into the lowest class of the Athenian populace, and soon the poorer class began to preponderate36 . The evil accordingly produced was twofold: not only did the poor and indigent start to dominate in decisions of foreign and domestic policy, but also the rich had now to suffer the aggrieved distress and exorbitant demands of a large citizenry. A democracy thus corrupted exhibited many features of a tyrannical regime. The public affairs «were conducted on a false principle», namely, that the real interests of the commonwealth were identical with the advantage of one class - the largest indeed, but still one - which was placed in permanent opposition towards the wealthy minority. And as the poor were illiterate and gullible, they fell easy victims to aspirant demagogues. For the demagogues Thirlwall had few good things to say. He even seems to have lost his habitual temperance in describing the case of Mytilene and Cleon's role. In the footsteps of Mitford and John Gillies doubt that the middle rank, which gives to science, to art, and to legislation itself, their most distinguished ornaments, the chief source of all that has exalted and refined human nature, is that portion of the community of which, if the basis of Representation were ever so far extended, the opinion would ultimately decide», etc. 36 History, Vol. IV, pp. 212-13; see also Vol. I, p. 411.

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(17 47 -1836), Scotland's Royal Historiographer and the second most famous eighteenth-century historian of ancient Greece, Thirlwall's portrait of Cleon is thoroughly negative, relying too much on Thucydides's prejudice (whom the historian treats too tenderly for the loss of Amphipolis). Cleon, a «master of impudence», perhaps not wholly «unconscious of his own emptiness and incapacity>>, knew very well that in the interest of his popularity he should have inflamed and satiated the «vindictive humour of the people». In discussing the case of the Spartan prisoners at Sphacteria, Thirlwall pointed out that Cleon was personally averse to peace, from selfish motives of a baser kind. The prolongation of the war «afforded him constant opportunities of exciting the passions of the multitude, calumniating his adversaries and enriching himself by extortion or peculation»37 . When Cleon died, he was succeeded by Hyperbolus, a man of similarly base character. Thucydides, writes Thirlwall, must have considered him so contemptible and hateful that he was only induced to mention him by the extraordinary circumstances of his death. Caution was not however a quality that Thirlwall was short of. Hence, despite the derogatory air of his earlier approach to the demagogues, a noticeable change takes place in his analysis of the political history of Athens during the troubled years of the Peloponnesian war. Mter restating that the ascendancy of the demagogues «may be thought» to prove the growing degeneracy of the people, the bishop goes on to warn his readers against «two errors» with respect to these popular leaders: «In the first place, it is probable that we are used to view them in a false light, and that they were not in general so despicable as, through the forced of certain associations, we are apt to consider them ... On the other hand the nature of their popularity has frequently been misrepresented, and the extent of their power overrated». If they were men of servile origin, mean condition and coarse manners, it should be remembered that the one whose personal influence was 37 History, Vol. III, p. 300. See also Thirlwall's remarks on the demagogue Cleophon, vol IV, pp. 89, 125.

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greatest was a demagogue of a very different stamp: «the noble, refined, accomplished Alcibiades»38 . The author of the Sicilian expedition and the Melian massacre was not the classic demagogue, and yet he was the most disgraceful amongst them. Who or what influenced Thirlwall to reconsider the role and function of the demagogues in the context of Athenian democracy we cannot determine. Sure it is, that his understanding from the fourth volume onwards, that is circa 1839, is considerably modified - either through the influence of private discussions with Grote, by reading Bulwer's Athens, or by the mere synergy of his calm scholarship. The Athenian character, Thirlwall believed, had been much «corrupted by the influence of the most unfavourable circumstances to which the virtue of a nation was ever exposed». But the misjudgments of political leadership were equally conducive to the defeat of the democratic cause. The most consequential error committed out of selfish motives was the breach of justice by which the contributions of the allies had been transferred into the Athenian treasury. The corruption of the Athenian courts of justice must have been closely connected with the great extension of their business when the allies had lost their independence and were compelled to resort to Athens for all important cases. The pay of the jurors introduced by Pericles transformed the legal process into «a regular source both of pleasure and profit». On this notorious temper of the courts 44 . Socrates founded Attic philosophy by polemicizing against the sceptical epistemology and the egoistic ethics of the sophists. Here is the only occasion where Thirlwall is bound to disagree with Aristophanes. The historian can hardly understand why and how Aristophanes was misled by immaterial external forms to ridicule Socrates on the stage. It seems incredible, Thirlwall observes, «that if he [the poet] had known all that makes Socrates so admirable and amiable in our eyes, he would have assailed him with such vehement bitterness». Far from being a corruptor of religion and morals, Socrates acknowledged that the framer and preserver of the universe was a Supreme Being, the one Creator. Intolerance, however, always goes with superstition and fanaticism. While such an intolerant and superstitious spirit prevailed at Athens, it is more surprising that Socrates should have been so long spared than eventually p:rosecuted45 . Thirlwall's account of the Athenians seems at first outright unfavourable, but the spirit pervading his remarks was not actually antiAthenian. Even though his admiration is reserved for the Solonian constitution and the early democracy of the fifth century, he does not hesitate to defend the Athenian democrats of the post-Periclean period against Mitford's verdict. In examining the case of the mutilation of the statues of Hermes shortly before the Sicilian expedition, Thirlwall observes that the moderns, scarcely associating acts of impiety with designs against the state, are inclined to condemn the Athenians for absurd behaviour. But the Athenians' credulity would not have appeared absurd to «our forefathers» in the years of the Popish Plot in 167879. Further, Thirlwall emphasizes the praiseworthy conduct of the Athenians after the fall of the Thirty. The final triumph of the popular cause was solidified by a generous amnesty, materialized with «wise 44 45

History, Vol. IV, p. 257. History, Vol. IV, pp. 267,273.

II 76 moderation and exemplary good faith» 46 . Mitford is insinuated in a footnote, when the tragic fate of Nicias and Demosthenes after their defeat from the Syracusans is discussed. The conduct of the latter, Thirlwall points out, «as was to be expected, afforded an occasion for the usual declamation on the jealous, cruel, and faithless temper of democratical despotism to a modem author, who seems to have thought . . . that it was only under such a despotism that instances have ever occurred.» Such a statement ignores the fact that cases of atrocity and actions morally detestable occur under any form of government. Political misbehaviour was by no means peculiar to democracy47 . Mitford's beloved Spartans, despite their warlike discipline (which cramped intellectual and civil progress) and the mixed character of their constitution, were no more humane in their conduct towards both the helots and their subjects. Thirlwall's political philosophy and the circumstances of his times predisposed him favourably towards the Athenian constitutional settlement of the Solonian era. He acknowledges the «wisdom and ingenuity» of Solon's legislation which, while not sinking into a mere ochlocracy, conferred to every citizen the right to consider himself as personally concerned and useful to the state. Of course it appears surprising how so «cautious and temperate» a statesman as Solon should have thought it wise to commit such extensive powers to so numerous a body, «taken indiscriminately and by chance ... , without any peculiar advantages of fortune and education»; and how he should not have drawn the distinction, so familiar to the modems, between the domain of the judge and the jury48 . Thus Thirlwall recognizes that popular sovereignty signalised an important advance in the constitutional history of Athens, but he believes that the absence of boundaries and limits in the appointment of public servants, magistrates and officers

History, Vol. III, p. 397 (Hermae), Vol. IV, pp. 209, 235 (amnesty). History, Vol. IV, p. 456fn. 48 History, Vol. II, p. 47. 46 47

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would render liberty a means to faction and demagoguery, especially in the unhappy days of the last quarter of the fifth century. Despite those imperfections, the constitutional arrangements of Solon worked smoothly, liberated the poor from oppression, and paved the way for a great civilization49 • It was no accident that the Athenians, almost unaided, could combat and defeat the massive troops of the Persians a few decades later in the battle of Marathon. Thirlwall does not forget that earlier historians unanimously found in the condemnation of Miltiades an easy way to deprecate the morality of the Athenians during that time. How far the Athenians are liable to the charge of ingratitude, the historian observes, depends on their view of how much they were obliged to him: If they conceived that nothing he had done for them ought to raise him above the laws, if they even thought that his services had been sufficiently rewarded by the station which enabled him to perform them, and by the glory he reaped from them, they were not ungrateful or unjust; and if Miltiades thought otherwise, he had not learnt to live in a free statem.

The spell of the Macedonians Thirlwall's narrative resumes vigour and fluidity as he approaches the destruction of Greek independence. Comparatively the lengthier part of the History, the struggle between the Greeks and the Macedonians is one of the most interesting and balanced accounts in nineteenth-century historiography on this topic. As Gooch rightly pointed

49 Thirlwall, anticipating Grote, defended also ostracism: even though it «was often mischievously abused, it may be questioned whether it was not a salutary precaution, not only as it proved a timely check on the ambition of aspiring individuals, but as it allayed or gave vent to the public uneasiness, which might otherwise have broken out into violence and bloodshed», History, Vol. II, p. 76. 50 History, Vol. II, 247.

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out, «unlike Niebuhr and Droysen, Mitford and Grote, [Thirlwall] understands both sides»51 . His account of Philip and Alexander the Great was indeed bound to differ widely from his predecessors. Most importantly, Alexander was hailed as the national leader of the Hellenic League in the work of Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-1884), Professor of History at Berlin. At the time the Macedonians came into the foreground, Droysen contended, the Greek values were rapidly declining while the obsessive attachment to local autonomy undermined social and political order and laid the gates of Greece open to Persia. The racially Greek Macedonians initiated a sacred and «national» war against Persia, a goal that eventually united all into a free and powerful sovereign state52 . While Alexander advanced the war of unity and liberation of the Hellenes, sophists like Demosthenes proved unfit to cope with the new spirit of the age; being shortsighted, they preferred old-fashioned freedom to the truly national grandeur. Evidently, Droysen's work was written under the influence of the current Prussian impulse of nationalism: the relations between the monarchy of Macedon and the pernicious Hellenic particularism of the past were to teach by precept and example the need for Prussian hegemony over the small German states of his own day. It is interesting to examine briefly how Thirlwall would respond to such an idealized picture of the Macedonians and to such an indictment against Demosthenes. In opening his sixty-first chapter on >. Demosthenes, in a corrupt and turbulent age, thought the liberty and honour of Athens still worth fighting for, and struggled to preserve Greece «from foreign dominion»60 . But the student of classical Greece, Thirlwall said, who reviews these events at a distance of many ages, and knowing the state of development in the years to come, is prone to disregard the heroism of the Athenian rhetorician. Without being named, Mitford is again the object of criticism in

58

J. GILLIES, History a/Greece, London 1793, Vol. IV, pp. 233,237.

After the war of independence in the 1820s, Alexander the Great was also steadily becoming a symbol of unity in the newly established Greek republic. Something that could not have escaped Thirlwall's attention, whose remarkable note of NEOPHYTOS DUKAS, History, Vol. VI, p. 157, proves that he did not neglect to read modern Greek literature as well. 60 History, Vol. V, pp. 255,293,297. He was «so clearly patriotic», Vol. VI, p. 2. 59

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a note, where an interesting parallel is drawn: «If in the reign of Peter the Great the power of Russia had been known to threaten the liberty of Europe, would an English orator have been guilty of falsehood or exaggeration, who should have spoken of the czar, as the Muscovite, the Barbarian?»61 . Athens resisting Macedonian imperialism becomes an object of warm admiration in Thirlwall's narrative. Notwithstanding occasional allusions to the degeneracy of public morals, the historian, now closely identifying himself with the cause of liberty, is inclined to give a brighter picture of Athens than earlier. Athens stood firm in supporting true Greek national consciousness. To one who rightly conceives of the liberal outlook of Thirlwall, even his bold disapproval of the «panHellenic» project of !socrates would scarcely appear surprising. The venerable !socrates saw in the bond of union between the ambitious rivals, under the pretext of a noble war against Persia, the only remedy for all evils that afflicted Greece. Perhaps, contends Thirlwall, the «best excuse» that can be offered for the elderly rhetorician is that he could not suffer the idea of Greece subject to a foreign master. Think of the Italian cities in the middle ages: they had every reason to rejoice when an emperor who threatened their liberties was forced to embark on a crusade for such an expedition could be expected to have weakened his dominion. «But they would have suspected the sanity of a citizen who should have advised them to combine their forces to put the German emperor in possession of the Greek empire; as we should that of a modem politician, who should propose a confederacy among the European states, to aid Russia in the conquest of Turkey, Persia, and India>>62 . With profound grief Thirlwall announces that the battle of Chaeronea was a «blow which put an end to the independence of Greece».

History, Vol. V, p. 322fn. History, Vol. V, p. 376. On the other hand, Demosthenes' opening to the Persians is vindicated, Vol. VI, p. 105. 6! 62

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Philip's treatment of the Athenians has been commonly accounted magnanimous, but it was simply designed to abate the resentment of Athens, thus allowing him to conciliate the other Greeks. The struggle between Philip and Demosthenes ended with the death of the former, but hostilities with Macedonia would have soon intensified. Philip was a «great man, certainly, according to the common scale of princes, though not a hero like his son, nor to be tried by a philosophical model». To his credit, Thirlwall is not led by his estimation of Demosthenes to revile Philip: we must remember, he observes, «that [Philip] preferred the milder ways of gratifying his ambition, to those of violence and bloodshed: that he at least desired the reputation of mercy and humanity>>. He is certainly one of those personages we wish to know more, but the history of his life is like «an ancient statue, made up of imperfect and ill-adjusted fragments» 63 . With Droysen at hand, Thirlwall embarked on his exploration of the life and expeditions of Alexander the Great. His account is preceded by a retrospective survey of the history of Persia, at the beginning of which the bishop makes clear that Alexander's invasion of Asia does not, strictly speaking, belong to the history of Greece: it rather belongs to universal history64 . Still it was not without reason that writers of Greek history thought it incumbent on themselves to relate the Macedanian march to the East, for it ended in the spread of the Greek population over the provinces of Asia, carrying the Greek language and manners from the shores of the Mediterranean to the banks of Indus. Bishop Thirlwall stands apart from the tradition that idealized Alexander, but still tries to be impartial in reconstructing the achievements and fate of the Macedonian prince. He refuses, for instance, to accept that Alexander could have any reasons to order two thousand prisoners at Tyre to be crucified. Moreover, it must have been reluctan63 64

History, Vol. VI, pp. 69, 86-7. History, Vol. VI, p. 120.

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tly that Alexander permitted himself to become the slave of oriental ceremonials - customs that should have appeared «repugnant to his feelings». But his policy, the bishop believed, was profoundly incompatible with the intrinsic interests of Greece, and as such was rightly treated as anti-Hellenic by most Greeks. Accordingly, when Alexander was engaged in the pursuit of Darius, his progress had been anxiously watched by the Greeks, who had never «ceased to hope that it might be arrested by some disaster>>65 . Yet the moderns, and especially Droysen, Thirlwall observes, are inclined to consider the advance of the Macedonian prince in terms of fulfilling the cause of Greece. The Greeks who took up arms against Macedonia are condemned as faithless, animated by mercenary motives: Demosthenes, the Athenians, the Spartans, are all charged with treason to the national cause. Beware, however: «It has been the fate of every struggle for freedom, and one of the hardest trials of those who engage in one, that, if it proves unsuccessful, it is condemned as an enterprise of madmen and traitors»66. Alexander's metamorphosis into an oriental prince, and his iniquities against his friends and compatriots (Parmenio, Cleitus, the philosopher Callisthenes, and others), are signs of his fast growing Eastern despotism - which ultimately rendered him «an object of pity, rather than ofblame»67 . In commenting on Alexander's treatment of the Sogdians, Thirlwall once again protested against Droysen's attempt to palliate the «barbarity of Alexander's proceeding»68 . His acts of revenge on the innocent tribal peasants, whom he persecuted and slaughtered, were instigated by his failure to reach the guilty. But the historian should never palliate such cruel atrocities:

History, Vol. VI, pp. 202,251, 254. History, Vol. VI, p. 257fn. 67 History, Vol. VI, p. 272. 68 History, Vol. VI, p. 294fn: «It is much to be regretted that so excellent a work as this of Droysen's should be disfigured by an idolatry which sacrifices every thing to its hero.» 65

66

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It ought rather to be acknowledged, that humanity was not one of the qualities that adorned Alexander's character, and that the clemency for which he has been often praised, did not rest on this foundation, but was the result of less amiable feelings, even where it was not the effect of a mere calculating policy. He could not perhaps have filled the part which he acted in the history of the world, if he had been capable of letting an emotion of pity restrain him in the career of his ambition. In the narrative of his conquests there is hardly room for a moral reflection on the misery they caused: because it would be equally appropriate every where. But he is answerable as a man, even to posterity, for all the evil he wrought, which did not essentially belong to his vocation as a conqueror>7. This treatment of Grote is analogous to the reception of his arguments by influential mid-nineteenth century scholars, like Benjamin Jowett and the Scottish classicist John Stuart Blackie, who commonly believed that the historian's unorthodox understanding of Plato was the result of his attachment to the school of Utilitarianism, and consequently, of his «inability» to appreciate Plato's so-called Idealism 8 . Grote's tendency to test Plato by the logic of utilitarianism is sufficiently transparent to trouble us here. Yet the practice of Grote's contemporary critics (and sometimes of modern scholars) of associating his work with hostility towards Plato, inasmuch as his avowed empiricism led him to discount the so-called «idealistic tradition», is problematic. The eminent Platonist, Lewis Campbell, argued, for instance, that Grote in the Plato «gives vent to an antipathy amounting almost to hostility against this labour [i.e., the Laws] of Plato's evening hour» 9 • All things considered, it remains questionable whether reading

7 W.C. GREENE, Platonism and its Critics, «Harvard Studies in Classical Philology» 61, 1953, p. 41. W. FITE, The Platonic Legend, London 1934, p. 4; K.R. POPPER, The Open Soclety and its Enemies, London 1952, Vol. I, p. 216, considered Grote to have been the liberal opponent of Platonic authoritarianism. B. F ARRINGTON, Professor of Classics at Swansea, invoked Grote's authority to condemn Platonic politics.· Science and Politics in the Ancient World, London 1939, p. 132. R.H.S. CROSSMAN recommended approvingly Grote's Plato, «the most stimulating work on the subject»: Plato To-Day, London 1937, p. 301. s Plato, in Blackie's judgment, was the «great apostle of idealism» Plato, in Edinburgh Essays by Members of the University, Edinburgh 1857, p. 2; and Jowett called Plato the «father of idealism» who is not to be estimated by the theory of Utility: «Preface to the First Edition» [1871], The Dialogues of Plato, 3rd ed., Oxford 1892, Vol. I, p. x. 9 L. CAMPBELL, Grote\ Plato, «Quarterly Review» 199, 1866, pp. 125-6.

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Plato in the light of philosophical utilitarianism would lead one to adopt a hostile attitude towards the philosoph&. As Theodor Gomperz understood, one of Grote's distinguished disciples in Germany, the «sober champions of utility and severe rationalism claim Plato for their intellectual ancestor» 10 . It is worth observing that James Mill had no difficulty in endorsing Plato's politics, inasmuch as «Plato's Republic may be regarded as a development, and, in many of its parts, a masterly development, of the principle applied by Mr. Mill; that identity of interests between the governors and the governed affords the only security for good government»u. A critical examination of Grote's impressively huge notes on Plato shows that his utilitarian influences in the 1820s rather contributed to a sympathetic treatment of Platonic political philosophy12 • But in his exposition of Plato's thought many

10 GOMPERZ, Greek Thinkers, transl. G.G. Berry, London 1905, Vol. II, p. 250. Similarly, D.G. RITCHIE, Plato, Edinburgh 1902, pp. 67-8. The question of Plato's utilitarianism is still debated: see, e.g., R. BARROW, Plato, Utilitarianism and Education, London 1975 ;J.D. MABBOTT,ls Plato's Republic Utilitarian?, «Mind»46, 193 7, pp. 468-74;].1. CREED, Is it wrong to call Plato a Utilitarian?, «Classical Quarterly» 28, 1978, pp. 349-65. 11 J. MILL, A Fragment on Mackintosh, London 1835~ p. 285. 12 See BL. Add. MSS., 29,529, fos. 9, 29,3 5. The association of utilitarianism and Platonic tenets is evident: «The three grand causes which determine the happiness of any community, are 1: Good laws. 2. Universal education. 3. Universally small families. If these three causes were once brought into full and concurrent operation, as much would be done as the situation of man in society admits of ... If in a nascent and untainted community, one were permitted to assume, what the vehement imagination of Plato ventures to claim in his Republic, the coincidence of philosophy and power in the same hands, the three above-benefits would result with infallible certainty. Perfection would not be attained at first, but mistakes would be discovered and corrected, when there were none of the governing interests concerned in their perpetuation». J.H. BuRNs indicates traces of Platonic influence in J.S. Mill's politics; see ].S. Mill and Democracy, 1829-61, «Political Studies» 5, 1957, pp. 160, 167; similarly, D.F. THOMPSON, John Stuart Mill and Representative Government, Princeton 1976, p.l13; F.W. GARFORTH,Educative Democracy, Oxford 1980, p. 22; A. RYAN,].S. Mill, London and Boston 1974, p. 130: «Mill frequently embraces the Platonic image of the happy society as one in which the people are willingly led by

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decades afterwards, the historian still thought he was providing a defence of Plato 13 • In the era of rationalism and positivism, Grote's work might have indeed appeared as a sustained 'defence' of Plato for two reasons. First of all, he provided a philosophical assessment of Plato's thought largely from a reaction to German Romanticism and the tendency to reduce Plato's thought to coherent dogmatic constructs. Secondly, one of his major concerns had been to disentangle the philosopher's doctrines from religious and metaphysical preconceptions.

the wisdom of the Guardians». Bentham of course scorned Plato, calling him «the master manufacturer of nonsense», Deontology, ed. A. GoLDWORTII, Oxford 1983, p. 137; seefurther, the passage quoted from his Theory a/Legislation, in R. ]ENKYNS, The Victorians and Ancient Greece, Oxford 1980, p. 247. He also accused Plato of folly in the Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness a/Mankind, ed. G. GROTE, under the pseudonym Philip Beauchamp, London 1822, pp. 19-20. Bentham's strictures are explicable if one takes into consideration what Platonic philosophy denoted in the eighteenth century. However, James Mill's attachment to Plato cannot be overestimated. AsJ.S. MILL remarks in the Autobiography, ed.J. STILLINGER, Oxford 1971, p. 14, there is no author to «whom my father thought himself more indebted for his own mental culture that Plato». R.A. FENN examines Mill's Platonism in James Mill's Political Thought, New York and London 1987, pp. 79-81; further, see L. STEPHEN, The English Utilitarians, London 1900, Vol. II, p. 3; and A.W. BENN, The History a/English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, London 1906, Vol. I, pp. 293-5; A. BAIN,]ames Mill: A Biography, London 1882, pp. 18-9. See also the comments on Mill's Platonic influences in T. BALL, ed., James Mill: Political Writings, Cambridge 1992, introduction; H.O. PAPPE, The English Utilitarians and Athenian Democracy, in R.R. BOLGAR, ed., Classicalinfluences on Western Thought A.D. 1650-1870, Cambridge 1979, p. 296, asserts that «[b]oth [Mills] contributed to Plato scholarship; both followed in his footsteps in thought and action»; see also, G.L. WILLIAMS, History and History: ].5. Mill on the Greeks, «Polis» 4, 1982, pp. 1-17. 13 See History a/Greece, 6th ed., London 1906, Vol. VII, p. 62. Grote, wrote Jowett to L. Campbell (5 April187 4), is «really inexcusable in his matter-of-fact and at the same time inconsistent manner of reading Plato, never seeing anything according to its meaning and intention, and de/ending Plato as paradoxically as he attacks him». Quoted inJ. GLUCKER, The Two Platos a/Victorian Britain, in K.A. ALGRA, P.W. VANDERHORST, D.T. RuNIA, ed., Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography ofAncient Philosophy, Leiden 1996, p. 392, emphasis added.

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By the end of the nineteenth century Jowett's Plato, the master Idealist, was more agreeable than the logical, secularized, historical Plato of Grote 14 . Things changed thereafter. This paper is an attempt to examine Grote's seminal accomplishment and to indicate by what means the Victorian classicist contributed to the development of modern Platonic scholarship. The brief discussion of the reception of Plato in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century is followed by a critical analysis of Grote's set of interpretive rules. Next, I shall point out what I think is distinctive in the actual content of his propositions, and finally assess their place in the history of Platonic criticism.

I First, we should place Grote's Plato in its particular setting. We learn from Harriet Grote that the historian was over sixty when he embarked on the project of writing a work on Plato, «attacking the philosophy of Plato» in her own misleading words 15 • His zeal was unrelenting, and his seclusion now unconditional. At that time Harriet writes of Grote: «George's reluctance to quit his work on Plato is insurmountable ... His character is just what it was, grand, serene, and gentle, although pertinacious in practical affairs requiring firmness ... [and] somewhat cooled in his enthusiasm for hurpanity, and possibility of human improvement, politically and morally. Who, indeed, is not after sixty?» 16 . Accepting Mrs Grote's dating to be correct, it appears

14 J owctt himself admitted that he had «derived much assistance from the great work of Mr. Grote». See, JowETT, The Dialogues of Plato, Vol. I, p. xii. On Grote's relationship with Jowett, their discussions and meetings at Barrow Green and Balliol, see H. GROTE, The Personal Lz/eo/George Grote, London 1873, pp. 260,267. 15 SeePersonalLz/e, p. 225. On Mrs Grote and her character, see Lady EASTLAKE, Mrs Grote: A Sketch, London 1880; further, M.L. CLARKE, George Grote: A Biography, London 1962, p. 25, andJ MoRLEY, The Lz/e a/Richard Cobden, London 1881, Vol. I, pp. 136-137. 16 T.H. LEWIN, ed., The Lewin Letters.· A Selection from the Correspondence and

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that most of the writing had extended over a considerable period of eight years, but preparation could be traced much earlier 17 . A passage from his Digest ofthe Dialogues a/Plato (manuscript notes dating prior to 1832), is indicative not only of his early preoccupation with the philosophy of Plato but also shows that by that time he had already formed the basic idea that would subsequently run throughout his commentary. «All these indeed are mere fanciful fictions, [i.e., the soul of the world and the derivation of the human soul from it] which the folly and mysticism of commentators, particularly in the early ages of Christianity, dragged forth to view as the most remarkable parts of his writings. The really valuable parts appear to have been cast into the shades. The real value of [Plato's] writings consists in their tendency to lead the mind up to a measure or standard- and to engender within it that scientific judgment (bnoT~!ll]), which alone can qualify it to embrace the larger clusters of phenomena. Whoever has his mind excited to the search of a standard, in such a manner that it can only be appeared by finding one- will be sure to find the right one; for there is no second contrivable or imaginable. All his patti cular discussions seem to be directed with a view to create this dialectical power, and the solution of the immediate topic ofinquiry becomes a secondary object» 18 .

Diaries of an English Family, 1756-1884, London 1909, Vol. II, p. 246 (letter to her sister, 14 July 1862). 17 See BL. Add. MSS., 29,527 [Verse Translations and Miscellaneous Notes from 1809-1824]. Further see, H. GROTE, Personal Lz/c, p. 225, and W. Smith's remarks on Grote's early interest in Plato, George Grote, p. 111. Mrs Grote writing to her sister, F. Eliza von Koch at Stockholm (13 October 1861), mentioned that Grote «is working steadily at his Plato book since 1856, but Lord knows when it will go to press», Lewin Letters, Vol., II, p. 243. It actually took «eight long years of labour and study» (Ibid., p. 253 ). A great deal of work was done by Dec. 1862, when Grote in a letter to Mill, expressed his fears that the Plato «cannot expect many readers -as for approving readers, they will few indeed>>: Personal Lzfe, p. 263. 18 BL Add. MSS., 29,522, fo. 9 [Digest of the Dialogues of Plato, prior to 1832]. On the philosophical significance of ancient dialectic, see also, J.S. MILL, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews, in Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, Collected Works,

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Before addressing the particulars of Grote's approach to Plato it would be desirable to present the reader with a synopsis of the prevailing streams of receptive treatment of the philosopher in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, as a key to an understanding of Grote's responses. I discern three tendencies in the treatment of the philosopher, which, for convenience I shall call, (i) the esotericist interpretation, (ii) the artistic or perfectionist, represented by the school of German Platonism, and (iii) the conservative approach, the one preferred by Grote's immediate predecessors in Britain. (i) The esotericist. The esotericist interpretation, leading to conclusions distinctly spiritual and transcendental, started under the auspices of the Neoplatonists, who sought to discover secret Platonic doctrines in the dialogues, interpreted allegorically. The exact nature of Plato's agrapha dogmata (unwritten doctrines)1 9 and their formal place in the Platonic edifice, had been a key issue for historians of philosophy in eighteenth-century Germany. Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann, whose Platonic researches aimed at establishing parallels between Plato's and Kant's philosophy, based his interpretation on the «systematic principle», i.e., accepting no philosophy to be deserving of that name except when a system of principles, «proportionate to the degree of intelligence manifested by each particular philosopher», could be detected as its indispensable foundation 20 • Employing this method in his study of Plato, Tennemann claimed that the philosopher intended a systematic synthesis grounded on principles only hinted at in the corpus, and thus it is upon the commentator's ingenuity to unveil the existing unity of purpose. The novelty of Tennemann's approach is epitomized in the

ed.J.M. ROBSON, Toronto 1984, Vol. XXI, pp. 229-30; and,]. STILLINGER, ed., The Early Draft a/John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, Urbana 1961, p. 48. 19 SeeARISTOTLE,Physics,209b.15;DeAnima, 404b.7. See alsoDIOG. LAERTIUS, III. 63, 80. The idea of secret doctrines has been supported by two passages in Plato's

Epistles: Second Ep., 314c., and Seventh Ep., 341c. Many ancient commentators followed this line of interpretation. 20 W.G. TENNEMANN, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, Leipzig 1829, trans. as A Manual of the History o/ Philosophy by A. JoHNSON, Oxford 1832, p. 3.

VI 26 widely unfamiliar issues handled in his System der platonischen Philosophie. In probing such themes as the method of dialectic, the development of the Platonic universe of ideas, and questioning the authenticity of a few texts traditionally ascribed to the ancient philosopher, the author practically declared himself a follower of Kant's doctrine; namely, that a reader may understand an author better than he understood himself, if the ideas put forward correspond to the true meaning of the philosopher's thoughts and nothing is said against his own testimonf 1. The Kantian doctrine did not, however, prevent Tennemann from dissecting Plato's thought without any regard for the way in which it is presented in the dialogues. But his achievement cannot be overestimated. In showing that the rejection of the N eo platonic mystical version of Plato is only the first step towards the reconstruction of the philosopher's 'grand design', the German scholar inaugurated a new era of Platonic criticism. In fact, Tennemann's predecessors who had rejected the Neoplatonic exegesis on the grounds of irrationality and obscurity, approached the philosopher with sharp contempt, thereby directing their readers to conclude that Proclus and Plotinus might, after all, havefocussed in one way or another on Plato's authentic ideas. The most influential historian of philosophy in the mid-eighteenth century, Johann Jacob Brucker, whose work was for Kant himself and the French encyclopedistes the principal authority, characteristically treated Plato as a man of no great mental power. In Brucker's study, the philosopher emerged as a syncretist, who had appropriated and confused Socratic, Pythagorean and Eristic influences. In rejecting the Neoplatonic exegesis, Brucker was led to the condescending conclusion that there was nothing consistent in Plato's «defective, extravagant and absurd» doctrines 22 •

21 TENNEMANN, System der platonischen Philosophie, in four vols, Leipzig 17921795. On Tennemann' s Platonic analysis see, J.-L. VrEILLARD-BARON, Le systeme de la philosophie platonicienne de Tennemann, «Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale» 78, 1973, pp. 513-524. 22 J. BRUCKER, Historia critica philosophiae, a mundi incunabilis ad nos tram usque aetatem deducta, five vols, Leipzig 17 42-17 44.1t was abridged for English readers by

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Grote made extensive use of the results of German Platonic scholarship and assessed their value with calm and independent judgment. He conceded the plausibility of Tennemann's argument to the effect that Plato had two distinct modes of handling philosophy (a popular and a scientific), but nothing in his view could prove whether the published dialogues contained the popular and not the scientific (Plato, I 231 )23 . The historian was not convinced that a perception of a dogmatic Plato strictly presupposes an esoteric reading, and that Plato intended to provide a philosophical system discernible only in secret aspects of his teaching. Grote's detailed argumentation directed against the traditional esoteric interpretation, provides even today a response to scholars who insist on the importance of Plato's enigmatic oral lectures. The debate over Plato's esoteric doctrines is still conducted by those who deny Plato's unwritten doctrines, hence defending the dialectical and negative Plato, and those who accept the agrapha, and adhere to the doxographical approach 24 . Tennemann's esotericist approach was fundamental to the reconstruction of Plato's philosophical system. At the same time in Britain

W. ENFIELD, and published as The History a/Philosophy, two vols, Dublin 1792. From the English translation see Brucker's condescending remarks, Vol. II, p. 214, pp. 223-225, p. 242. See also Brucker's earlier IIistoria phtlosophica doctrinae de ide is, Augsburg 1723, in which he distinguished between Plato's genuine theory of Ideas and that of the Neoplatonists. n SeeR. ScHONE, Uber Platonzr Protagoras, Leipzig 1862, pp. 67-8 [Grote's collection, now at the London University Library]. Plato's system, according to Schone, was taught in his oral lectures only. 24 The debate over Plato's esoteric doctrines has been interminable, especially in Germany. On the debate see, L. BRISSON, Premises, Consequences, and Legacy of an Esotericist Interpretation a/Plato, «Ancient Philosophy» 15, 1995, pp. 117 -34; K. GAISER, Plato's Enigmatic Lecture on the Good, «Phronesis» 25, 1980, pp. 5-37; and C. RowE, Book Note on Plato, «Phronesis» 42, 1996, pp. 217-27, with comments on the latest contributions. From a different perspective see, A.H. ARMSTRONG, The Hidden and the Open in Hellenic Thought, in his Hellenic and Christian Studies, Aldershot 1990, pp. 81-117, where Platonic esotericism is defended.

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esoteric readings were more close than ever to the mystical interpretation of the Neoplatonists. The treatment of Plato in eighteenth-century Britain had been occasionally hostile in the works of certain scholars, owing to the longestablished conception of the philosopher's alleged capacity to foresee some fundamendal biblical truths25 . Rationalists, on the other hand, attacked Plato on the grounds of mysticism and paganism. An age of common sense, as Clarke argues, was not prepared to accept a philosophy associated with abstruse doctrines and Neoplatonic incrustations26. The failure of Floyer Sydenham to promote Platonic studies in Britain is quite characteristic of the negative intellectual perceptions that surrounded the name of the Greek philosopher. Sydenham, an exceptionally qualified classical scholar, embarked on the project of translating the entire Platonic corpus into English; unable to get subscrihers or even to retain those who had promised to support the scheme, he died in a debtor's prison in 178727 • The project was carried on by a modern disciple of Proclus, the obscure Thomas Taylor, self-named «Platonist». It is not surprising that Taylor, who in his various writings

25 ANDRE DACIER, whose incomplete French version of Plato was translated into English and was widely read, argued that Plato was an inspired witness to Christian Theology. See his long introduction in the first English edition, The Works a/Plato abridg'd, London 1701. A disciple of Plato, E. MAcFAIT, observed that contemporary scholars «have decided against [Plato] with great vehemence»: Remarks on the Lz/e and Writings of Plato. With Answers to the Principal Objections against him, Edinburgh and London 1760, p. 3. 26 M.L. CLARKE, Greek Studies in England: 1700-1830, Cambridge 1945, pp. 112-113. 27 See E.I. CARLYLE, Sydenham, Player, in the Dictionary a/National Biography, London 1898, Vol. LX, p. 245. See the note in the «Monthly Review» 36, 1767, pp. 422-423: the author laments that «a work of such literary consequence as the translation and illustration of Plato must lie unexecuted for want of pecuniary encouragement». Sydenham managed to publish A Synopsis or General View ofthe Works of Plato, London 1759, and until his death nine translations of individual dialogues. Grote treated Sydenham with respect, citing his views on many occasions: see, Plato, Vol. II, pp. 214n, 331n, 541n, 591, 595n. He never mentioned Taylor.

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had consistently attacked the current mechanistic and experimental science, revived in the end the Neoplatonic tradition in an original manner. In the Creed of the Platonic Philosopher (1805), Taylor openly declared himself an anti-Christian and a polytheist, as genuine philosophers, he thought, should be. The true philosopher, he argued graphically, is by definition a legitimate student of Plato, the one «who possesses a naturally good disposition; is sagacious and acute, and is inflamed with an ardent desire for the acquisition of wisdom and truth; who from his childhood has been well instructed in the mathematical disciplines; who, besides this, has spent whole days, and frequently the greater part of the night, in profound meditation»28 • By a strange coincidence the first volume of Schleiermacher' s German version of Plato appeared in 1804, the year Taylor's complete translation of Plato was published. The two works are as unlike as two cultural products of different eras can be. Taylor's idealist vision of the true philosopher appealed to the Romantics, but understandably it was too far removed from the practical image of the philosopher-scientist of the new age to have any impact upon the utilitarians. It is no accident that Taylor's harshest critic was the Scottish settler in London, James Mill, who brought with him a solid background in Enlightenment education29 • Grote himself never took Taylor seriously, but esotericism definitely troubled him for it constituted the first step towards the perfectionist approach, which he found most appealing to German scholars.

28 TAYLOR, The Works a/Plato, London 1804, Vol. I, p. cxii. See also Miscellanies, in Prose and Verse: containing the Triumph of the Wise Man over Fortune, according to the Doctrine of the Stoics and Platonists; The Creed of the Platonic Philosopher, London 1805; more on Taylor inK. RAINE and G.M. HARPER, ed., Thomas Taylor the Platonist: Selected Writings, Princeton 1969. Taylor's impact on the Romantic Movement is discussed in K. RAINE, Thomas Taylor, Plato, and the English Romantic Movement, «British Journal of Aesthetics» 8, 1968, pp. 99-123. 29 See J. MILL, Taylor's Translation ofPlato,« The Literary J ournal>>3, 1804, pp. 449-61, 577-89; Taylor's Plato, «Edinburgh RevieW>> 14, 1809, pp. 187-211.

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(ii) The artistic, or perfectionist. The leader of this interpretation was Friedrich Schleiermacher, the most important Protestant theologian of the Romantic movement. The German philosopher assumed the existence of an integral system running throughout Plato's philosophy. In his words, the philosophy of Plato could only be appreciated by the scholar's ability to estimate «the pervading presence of a purpose in the connexion of his writings». Schleiermacher's leading hypothesis was the systematic interdependence of Plato's dialogues: Plato had a preconceived philosophical scheme, to which he gave form throughout three symmetrical progressive stages of his activity as a writer. This scheme could be detected as a «natural sequence and a necessary relation in these dialogues to one another»30 • The dialogues had been variously disarranged. The corpus, Schleiermacher judged, could be restored in its sequential order only by determining what pieces were genuine. His tendency to depreciate the minor or inconclusive dialogues as unsuitable to Plato's style and potential, became a common practice amongst German classicists31 • Of all the issues introduced by the Schleirmacherean approach to Plato, none was more hotly debated than the question as to which dialogues should be denounced as forgeries. Schleiermacher, whose methodology became a milestone in

30 F. SCHLEIERMACHER, Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato, transl. W. DoBSON, Cambridge 1836, pp. 5, 18. See also Grote's extensive notes on Schleiermacher in BL Add. MSS., 29,522 (prior to 1832), fos. 52-62. Schleiermacher translated Plato into German: see Platons W erke, six vols, Berlin 1817 -1828; first edn in five vols, 1804-1807. 31 On this tendency see, W.L. BLACKLEY, The Authenticity a/the Workso/Plato, «Fortnightly Review» 4, 1867, pp. 273-4. On the controversy over the order and authenticity of Plato's dialogues, see H. BONITZ, Platonische Studien, 3 rd ed., Berlin 1886, pp. v-vu; W. WrNDELBAND, History of Ancient Philosophy, transl. H.E. CusHMAN, from the 2nd German edn, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophic [1893], London 1900, pp. 181-182; and C.A. BRANDIS, Plato, in W. SMITH, ed., Dictionary a/Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London 1859, Vol. III, pp. 393-6. Cf. L. STROMPELL, Geschichte der Praktischen Philosophic der Griechen vor Aristoteles [Grote's collection, now at the London University Library], Leipzig 1861, p. 265; also, ScHONE, Uber Platonis Protagoras, p. 15.

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the development of hermeneutics, was followed by Friedrich Ast, Joseph Socher, the Hegelian Eduard Zeller, and others who, though approaching the subject from very different points of view, yet concurred in rejecting several even of the greatest pieces, the authenticity of which had previously been unassailed. To give a few representative examples: Ast, the industrious author of the Lexicon Platonicum (183 538) and himself editor of the Platonis Opera (1819-1832), notwithstanding his insistence that Plato's creativity was not confined within the narrow limits of systematic arrangement, assumed that Plato sought above all aesthetic perfection, a thesis that led him to discard as spurious, the Meno, Apology, Crito, Euthydemus, Laches, Charmides, Lysis, and, even against Aristotle's explicit assertion, the Laws32 • It is worth observing that the Laws was also rejected by Zeller, Suchow and Ackermann 33 • A few years after the completion of Ast's work, Socher rejected as spurious the Politicus, Parmenides, Sophist and Critias, and his suggestions were later taken up by Frederick Ueberweg34 . Adolf Trendelenburg of Berlin, the Aristotelian scholar, not only adopted Schleiermacher' s theory of a preconceived purpose connecting all Plato's dialogues together, but even extended this purpose to Plato's oral lectures35 • Schleiermacher' s most prominent opponent was the

32 G.A.F. AsT, Platons Leben und Schri/ten, Leipzig 1816, pp. 376-385. The Platonis Opera was published in eleven vols, Leipzig 1819-1832. 33 E. ZELLER, PlatonischeStudien, Ti.ibingen 1839, pp. 46-131; G.F.W. SucHow, Die Wissenschaftliche und Kunstlerische Form der Platonischen Schri/ten, Berlin 1855, p. 414; in an earlier work Suchow argued against the authenticity of the Parmenides: De Platonis Parmenide, Vratislaviae 1823; C. AcKERMANN, The Christian Element in Plato and the Platonic Philosophy, transl. S.R. AsBURY, Edinburgh and London 1861, p. 31. 34 J. SocHER, Ober PlatonsSchri/ten, Miinchen 1820, pp. 262-291; F. UEBERWEG, Untersuchungen iiber die Echtheit und Zeit/olge Platonischen Schri/ten, und iiber die Hauptmomente aus Platos Leben, Wien 1861, pp. 108-112. C. ScHAARSHMIDT rejected as spurious the Sophist and Politicus: Die Sammlung der Platonischen Schrzften zur Scheidung der echten von den unechten untersucht, Bonn 1866. 35 F.A. TRENDELEMBURG, Platonis de ideis et numeris doctrina ex Aristotele illustrata, Leipzig 1826, p. 6.

VI 32 learned Karl Friedrich Hermann, who taught at Marburg between 1832 and 1842, before he moved to Gottingen to hold the chair of Philology and Archaelogy till his death in 1855. Hermann criticized Schleiermacher' s reliance on the idea of the philosopher artist, and in particular the view that Plato followed a preconceived plan in his entire work. Hermann recommended a historical interpretation of Plato: Plato's affirmative philosophy as distinguished from the Socratic was acquired gradually throughout his life, and reflected the enlargement of his philosophical horizon. At first Hermann intended to give a comprehensive account of the historical development of Plato's mind, but he managed to publish only a single volume where he dealt with chronology, leaving aside philosophical exposition36 • In practice, the systematic trend led often to extravagant interpretations. Edward Munk, for instance, argued that Plato's chief aim in writing was to provide an extensive biography of Socrates, so that each dialogue had its place assigned according to the apparent age of Socrates at the supposed date of the dialogue. Naturally, this assumption resulted in paradoxes, like the need to place the Phaedo as the last work of Plato 37 • Schleiermacher and Hermann established two distinct approaches to Plato, which were adopted with variations by other scholars. Both expository schemes of the Platonic text ended uniformly in the fashion for athetisation. The systematic school rejected with extreme severity some works because they were supposed not to fit the progressive requirements of Plato's scientific ends. The historical school assumed that some dialogues were simply inferior to the rest in matter and execution, and were thus disallowed: They were destitute of the typical

16 K.F. HERMANN, Geschichte und System der platonischen Philosophie, Heidelberg 1839. Hermann's thesis was later adopted by F. SusEMIHL, I)ie genetische Entwickelung der platonischen Phzlosophie, Leipzig 1855-1860. 17 E. MuNK, Die natiirliche Ordnung der platonischen Schrz/ten, Berlin 1856, quoted in W. LurosLAWSKI, The Origin and Growth a/Plato's Logic, London 1897, pp. 48-49.

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Platonic flares et dulcissimas Veneres, according to Schleiermacher's distinguished student, Augustus Bockh. The minor dialogues were generally treated as of trivial, if any, philosophical significance. Grote would reverse the judgment. The practice of discarding individual compositions, he argued, betrayed a preestablished idea of a systematic purpose, as well as the scholars' propensity to apply a perfectionist artistic standard in restoring Plato's scheme. When a dialogue did not satisfy the reader's own subjective criteria of artistic perfection, it was inferred that Plato would have never proceeded to put it in writing. (iii) The conservative. During the first half of the nineteenth century Plato attracted many enthusiastic advocates in Britain. It was understood that Platonic philosophy rightly divined, could be a means for edification, in an age 'threatened' by libertarian maxims. Plato, in other words, could provide a positive example of how to resist change and decadence. In commenting on Grote's contribution,J.S. Mill described it in terms of a radical departure from the established reception of Plato: «The opinion which commonly prevails about Plato is something like the following. The Athenians, and the other Greeks, had become deeply demoralized by a set of impostors called Sophists -pretenders to universal knowledge, and adepts at disconcerting simple minds by entangling them in a mesh of words - who corrupted young men of fortune, by denying moral distinctions, and teaching the art of misleading a popular assembly. The lives and intellectual activity of Sokrates and Plato had for their chief object to counteract the doctrines and influence of these men. They devoted themselves to vindicating the cause of virtue against immoral subtleties; but they came too late; the evil was too far advanced for cure, and the ruin of Greece was ultimately the consequence of the corruption engendered by the Sophists»38 • Apparently, it was a reaction to utilitarianism that led scholars to represent Plato as the paradigm case of Idealism. In the conservative approaches a critique of empiricism was formulated, highlighting the

18 J.S. MILL, Grote's Plato, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, Collected Works, ed.J.M. RoBSON, Toronto 1978, Vol. XI, pp. 387-388.

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deleterious effects of religious scept1c1sm and political radicalism. Platonic tenets were expected to provide an antidote, by inculcating sound moral views and political prudence. Scholars like William Butler and William Sewell, who both contributed materially to the formation of conservative Platonism in Victorian Britain, were also severe critics of Utilitarian ethics and Comtean positivism. Sewell, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, argued that Plato had become more relevant to England, for his divine and immutable system of moral truth could oppose the dangerous excesses of utilitarianism into which «the present and the last age ... have universally fallen» 39 . Sewell went so far as to assert that Plato's Republic constituted a polity for the education of man, just as the Church is a polity established for the education of Christians. Renn Dickson Hampden, who had taught at Oxford in the 3 Os, similarly called attention to Plato's distinctive object, namely, to counteract the «crying evil of those times», the tendency to subject everying to empirical tests 40 . In this light, Plato represented the uncompromising sage and the incarnation of the true philosopher. In morals, the Greek sage established the objectivity of universal truth against sophistic relativism, while in politics he advocated a type of governmental rule that ran counter to political factionalism and' democratic frenzy'. Plato's mission was to counteract the sceptical and

; 9 WI. SEWELL, Introduction to the Dialogues a/Plato, Oxford 1841, p. 75; see further, W.A. BuTLER, Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, Cambridge 1856, Vol. II, p. 160; RD. HAMPDEN, The Fathers a/Greek Philosophy, Edinbugh 1862, p. 353. Plato, in the words of the anonymous essayist, The Stydy o/ Plato, «Macmillan's Magazine» 24, 1871, pp. 82-83, is «called up ... to be a champion, to help us, against materialism, a system of philosophy that reigns in England now». 40 HAMPDEN, The Fathers a/Greek Philosophy, p. 240. See further, J.P. PoTTER, Characteristics o/ the Greek Philosophers: Socrates and Plato, London 1845, pp. 3758; J.S. BLACKIE, Plato and Christianity, «North British Review» 35, 1861, pp. 369373, and Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism, Edinburgh 1871, esp. p. 410, where Sewell's christianized Plato is defended (Introduction, p. 7); G. CHATTERTON, Selections /rom the Works of Plato, London 1862, p. IV.

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materialist philosophy of the sophists, which he confronted with the sublime tenets of ethical excellence and political wisdom. The school of «modern sophism (i.e. the utilitarians) could find its ancient counterpart in the school of the fifth-century sophists. Drawing the parallel between England and Periclean Athens, scholars warned the nation of the dangers oflosing the power of moral vision, the immutable standard of right and wrong, without which political society was steadily declining. Sewell argued emphatically that «if oral instruction is diminishing, so it was at Athens; if books are multiplying upon us, and books of the most frivolous kind, so it was at Athens; if a shifting and changing of opinion has destroyed all confidence in public men, so it was at Athens» 41 . What early Victorian Platonists shared with their pro-Platonic predecessors was the tendency to employ selectively the strategy of fabricating Plato's 'historical role', as centred around his opposition to Athenian democracy, while emphasizing at the same time the immutable and eternal character of his moral codes. The polemical employment of Plato's philosophy by Grote's predecessors in Britain, and the repeated appeal to the transcendental dimension of his writings, did not allow for considerable progress in the field of critical Platonic analysis 42 • Grote's declared aim was to produce an intelligible Plato, a Plato neither transcendentalized nor abstracted from the realities of fifth and fourth-century Athenian political and intellectual life. There were no significant English contributions to Platonic studies until the sixties,

SEWELL, Introduction to the Dialogues a/Plato, p. 75. W. LOWNDES, in his Remarks on the Lz/e and Writings of Plato [Grote's collection, now at the London University Library], London 1827, p. 34,laments «the disregard shewn to Plato in our public schools and universities». Thirty years later ].S. BLACKIE exclaimed that «[b]etween Plato and the English nation there is in fact a gulf which cannot be passed», implying that Plato would disdain «our terrestrial tendency»: Plato, p. 6. See also G.H. LEWES, Biographical History of Philosophy, London 1845, Vol. II, p. 30; and the introductory note of B.B. EDWARDS and E.A. PARK, Selections/rom German Literature, New York 1839, pp. 3-5. 41

42

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when a stream of editions and commentaries began to flow4 3 • Grote's Plato is in fact one of the first fruits of this momentous revival. II We have so far examined Grote's individual environment as a student of Plato. At this stage it is essential to ask how the historian himself saw the conventional treatment of Plato. Like his mentor,] ames Mill, Grote attacked «The Neo-Platonists ... [who] introduced a new, mystic, and theological interpretation, which often totally changed and falsified Plato's meaning» (Plato, I 170-71) 44 • Their exegesis influenced the Renaissance Platonists, and through them the schools of modern interpreters. The recovery of Plato in the Renaissance owed a great deal to the meticulous Theologia Platonica ofMarsilio Ficino, that converted Plato's philosophy into a corpus aethereum45 • Ficino's conception of

43 Among the first scholarly editions of Platonic dialogues in the nineteenth century are: T.W. WAYTE, Platonis Protagoras, Cambridge and London 1854; T.D. WoOLSEY, The Gorgias of Plato, Cambridge 1848; C. BADHAM, Platonis Philebus, London 1855. In the sixties: E. PasTE, Philebus, Oxford 1860; L. CAMPBELL, Theaetetus, Oxford 1861.Jowett's translation was followed by several monographs. 44 SeeJ. MILL, Taylor's Plato, pp. 191-193. Similarly E. GIBBON had been very critical of the Neoplatonic exegesis: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [17811788], London 1895, Vol. III, p. 77. J.S. MILL also attacked those who designated themselves Platonists, the mystical and allegorical interpreters: Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, Collected Works, Vol. XI, p. 39. 45 By far the best account on the Renaissance reception of Plato is J. HANKINS, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, Leiden and New York 1991. See further, N .A. RoBB, Neoplatonism ofthe Italian Renaissance, London 193 5; P. MERLAN, From Platonism to Neoplatonism, The Hague 1960;J.M. RrsT, Mysticism and Transcendence in Later Neoplatonism, «Hermes» 92, 1964, pp. 213-215, and on the context R. WEISS, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, Oxford 1969. On the Platonists of Cambridge, see J.H. MuiRHEAD, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy, London 1931, pp. 25-71; C.A. PATRIDES, The Cambridge Platonists, Cambridge 1969, reading list, pp. XXX -n;J.P. KENNEY, Mystical Monotheism: A Study in Ancient

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Platonic philosophy was one of drastic spiritual medicine: In exploring the depths of Parmenides, Ficino required the reader to purify himself morally and intellectually before approaching the «sacred reading»46 . The scholars of the sixteenth down to the eighteenth century remained faithful to the Neoplatonic refinements, yet they sought to frame a more literal interpretation of the Platonic text, correctly presented and improved. The traditional line of interpretation had been transmitted to the Cambridge Platonists whose commentaries formed the basis for treating the allegorical Plato as the spiritual ally of Christianity, and to Thomas Taylor who was, of course, not prepared to surrender his Neoplatonic allegiance to the «Vitals in religion». Modern Platonic critics, according to Grote, continued «to regard Plato so entirely as a spiritual person ... that they disdain to take account of his relations with the material world, or with society around him» (Plato, I 201). Grote thus assumed that even the German attempt at reconstructing a Platonic system depended on the methodology of systematic canonical perfection (literary, or strictly philosophical), which as a tendency had its roots in Neoplatonism. Grote approached Plato from the perspective of four interpretive assumptions: (i) Plato's historicity. Grote's first postulate at reconstruction was that a historical insight into the biographical circumstances of Plato and his place within the framework and development of Athenian life and democracy is essential before any interpretation could be applied. On

Platonic Theology, Hanover and London 1991, contains a useful analysis ofPlotinian reception (pp. 91-128), and full bibliography on the mystical reception. See also, N.G. WISLON,Scholarso/Byzantium, London 1983, esp. ch. II; R.F. HATHAWAY, The Neoplatonic Interpretation a/Plato· Remarks on its Decisive Characteristics, 2, 1865, p. 169. CHROUST,

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tes and rejected Plato. If this is true, then Grote might have not been unsympathetic to Schleiermacher's argument that Plato in his early dialogues largely recounted Socratic conversations, whereas in the expository pieces he expounded what was distinctive in his own philosophical conclusions 68 . This argument, of course, lent support to Schleiermacher's hypothesis of a positive system running through Plato's major dialogues. In a far different ideological context, Karl Popper distinguished between Socratic teaching and Platonic philosophy, claiming that Socrates was a democratic critic of democracy, whereas Plato its uncompromising authoritarian enemy. Grote's approach differed substantially. The Victorian classicist forewarned his readers that Plato's protagonists bear historical names but still are made to speak his own language69 • The 'warning' includes, I suggest, Socrates too. Plato's early dialogues are not merely the embodiment of the mind of Socrates. Grote's Socrates is always synonymous with the negative Plato. Socrates seems to be Plato's own device, albeit a legitimate projection of some of the master's philosophical characteristics. Consequently, the Platonic Socrates does not coincide with the historical person, the Xenophontic sage (Plato, III 562, 588). The only exception where such a coincidence could be sustained is Plato's portrayal of Socrates in the Apology, a dialogue displaying more or less the real proceedings of the triaF 0 • This point is analogous to Gregory Vlastos' remark that even with Socrates, Plato's aim, «in stark contrast to Xenophon's professed aim in his Socratic writings, is not to preserve memories of Socratic philosophi-

6R SCHLEIERMACHER, On the Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher, «Philological Museum» 2, 1833, pp. 538-55. J.S. Mill praised the German scholar for «his excellent dissertation» on Socrates, Collected Works, Vol. XI, pp. 241-242. 69 See C.H. KAHN, Grote's Plato and the Companions ofSokrates, in W.M. CALDER III & S. TRZASKOMA, ed., George Grote Reconszdered, Hildesheim 1996, p. 48, 51. 70 See BL Add. MSS., 29,522, fo. 17. Here Grote follows Schleiermacher; so did J.S. Mill, and J. FORSTER, The Dialogues of Plato, «Foreign Quarterly Review» 31, 1843, p. 472. According to W.K.C. GuTHRIE, History of Greek Philosophy, Cambridge 1975, Vol. IV, p. 72, in «Zeller's time this was the prevailing view».

VI 48 zing, but to create it anew» - his interest was in «producing, not reproducing, Socratic philosophizing»71 . Now the concept of a Platonized Socrates had significant interpretive consequences. First, the philosophical hero of eighteenth-century Britain, Socrates, is in Grote reduced to ordinary proportions72 . Characteristically, in an age of Socratism as the eighteenth century was 73 , the condescending treatment of Plato had been rooted in the idea of two antithetical philosophies. Socrates appeared to have been the glorious antagonist of the sophists, a proto-Christian sage detached from wordly desires, whose instructions tended to undermine the established idolatry, whereas Plato spoiled in the process the master's teaching. Accor-

71 G. VLASTOS, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Ithaca and New York 1991, p. 50. A.R. LACEY, Our Knowledge a/Socrates, in VLASTOS, ed., The Philosophy of Socrates, Notre Dame, Indiana 1971, pp. 22-49, examines old testimonies and modern discussions. See also W.K.C. GuTHRIE's indispensable chapter in Socrates, Cambridge 1971, pp. 5-57. Recent discussion in B.S. GoWER and M.C. STOKES, Socratic Questions: The Philosophy ofSocrates and its Significance, London and New York 1993; T.C. BRICKHOUSE and N.D. SMITH, Plato's Socrates, New York 1993; A. GoMEZ-LoBo, The Foundations of Socratic Ethics, Indianapolis 1994. 72 Socrates' idealization was attacked by Grote in the 1820s, in his essay on Socrates. SeeK. DEMETRIOU, Grote on Socrates: an Unpublished Essay of the 1820s in its Context, «Dialogos» 3, 1996, pp. 36-50. Yet even in the nineteenth century Socrates continued to appeal to Christianity. See J.P. POTTER, The Religion of Socrates. Dedicated to Sceptics and Sceptic-Makers, London 1831. Potter attacked Plato on the grounds of «sensual polytheism» in The Mysticism of Plato, London 1832, esp. pp. 47 -8; see also the interesting essay of the philosopher]. PRIESTLEY, Socrates and Jesus Compared, London 1803; E. EVERETT, Aristophanes and Socrates, «North American Review« 14, 1822, pp. 273-296 (a review of T. MITCHELL, Comedies of Aristophanes, London 1820);]. FoRSTER, Socrates and the Sophists o/ Athens, «Foreign Quarterly Review» 30, 1843, pp. 341-342; C.S. STANFORD, Plato's Apology a/Socrates, Crito and Phaedo, Dublin 1835, pp. II-III; H. CARY, The Works of Plato, London 1848, Vol. I, p. 2; H. WILSON, Socrates and the Philosophy, «Southern Literary Messenger» 29, 1859, pp. 14-29. J.S. Blackie called Socrates the «Messiah» of the «Heathen Church»: Plato, p. 30. 73 See E.M. MANASSE, Platonism since the Enlightenment, in the Dictionary a/the History a/Ideas, ed. P.P. WIENER, New York 1973, Vol. III, p. 517.

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ding to Grote, it is Plato who disputes, interrogates, applies his elenchus and «succeeds in inspiring his readers with much of the same interest in the process of dialectic enquiry which he evidently felt in his own bosom». The stimulus Plato gave to his audience constitutes, according to Grote, «one of his principal titles to the gratitude of intellectual men» (Plato, I 276). Grote's remark on the Gorgias concerns explicitly Plato, and it is worth quoting: «Nowhere in ancient literature is the title, position, and dignity of individual dissenting opinion, ethical and political - against established ethical and political orthodoxy - so clearly marked out and boldly asserted» (Plato, II 151). Similarly, the «stress laid by Plato upon the full liberty of dissenting reason, essential to philosophical debate- is one of the most memorable characteristics of the Phaedon» (Plato, II 157). Secondly, Plato was in Grote's eyes a peculiar type of radical philosopher- definitely, more radical than the sophists who consistently promulgated the common sentimentl 4 • In Grote's words: «[Plato] is an innovator in religion; and a dissenterfrom 74 Commentators, on the contrary, have consistently stressed Grote's unconditional endorsement of the so-called ancient liberalism, which he presumably found embodied in the sophistic movement. See, for instance, R.W. MACKAY, TheSophistes of Plato, London 1868, p. 47: «The e~ger justification of the Sophists heard simultaneously from so many quarters indicates the prevalence of a strong sympathy and affinity with them, naturally combining with a desire for self-justification»; similarly, J.F. FERRIER, Lectures on Greek Philosophy and other Philosophical Remains, ed., A. GRANT and E.L. LcSHINGTON, Edinburgh and London 1866, Vol. I, p. 207; G.T. KINCDOM, An Essay on the Protagoras of Plato in which a reply is furnished to some Modern Critics, Cambridge and London 1875. p. 3; E.M. CoPE, The Sophists, «Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology» 1, 1854, p. 146;}. OWEN, George Grote, p. 516; E. CAIRD, Plato and the other Companiom o/Sokrates, p. 354; L. CAMPBELL, Grote's Plato, p. 125; T. MAGUIRE, Essays on the Platonic Ethics, London, Oxford and Cambridge 1870, p. III, 1, 4. In modern times: E.R. Demos, The Ancient Concept a/Progress and other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief, Oxford 1973, pp. 92-3, and Plato and the Irrational, 99, 1856, p. 82; J. ANSTER, Grote's Greece, «Dublin University Magazine» 45, 1855, p. 486. 79 History a/Greece, Vol. VII, p. 38.

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abandonment of philosophizing, and illuminates the raison d' etre of the political revolution envisaged in the constructive works. Plato's reaction is thus justifiable if one considers «what appears to have been Plato's own feeling- that the social and political life of the Athenians was a dirty and corrupt business» (Plato, II 254). Grote's treatment of Plato's dialogues of dogmatic exposition is clearly related to his marked idealization of Athens. But whatever the ideological bias manifested in Grote's argument, the assumption that he provided a defence of Plato becomes now more conclusive. Attempting to justify what appeared illiberal and suppressive of individuality in Plato's discourse, led the historian to provide the apologia of the philosopher by means of questioning the truly philosophical orientation of the constructive works. Plato's intellectual legacy to humanity rests on his consistent protest against uncritical affirmation, on paving the way for the proper mode of speculative investigation, and the propagation of the spirit in which such enquiries should be conducted. Thus, finally, (iv) Plato's grandeur depends on what he asked instead of what he a/firmed. Grote's admonition to Plato's readers near the end of the second volume is illuminating. Platonic critics, he said, are not satisfied unless «they conceive him in the professorial chair as a teacher, surrounded by a crowd of learners ... Reasoning upon such a basis, the Platonic dialogues present themselves to me as a mystery ... If we are to find any common purpose pervading and binding together all the dialogues, it must not be a didactic purpose, in the sense above defined. The value of them consists, not in the result, but in the discussion- not in the conclusion, but in the premisses for and against it. In this sense all the dialogues have value, and all the same sort of value- though not all equal in amount. In different dialogues, the same subject is set before you in different ways: with remarks and illustrations sometimes tending towards one theory, sometimes towards another. It is for you to compare and balance them, and to elicit such result as your reason approves. The Platonic dialogues require, in order to produce their effect, a supplementary responsive force, and a strong effective reaction, from the individual reason of the reader: they require moreover

VI 54 that he shall have a genuine interest in the process of dialectic scrutiny ... »(Plato, II 550-51) 80 • The reader is therefore expected to experience for himself the force of Socratic scrutiny, and mould his intellect in the process of dialectic 81 . «To form inquisitive, testing minds, fond of philosophical debate as a pursuit, and looking at opinions on the negative as well as on the positive side, is the first object in most of Plato's dialogues: to teach positive truth, is only a secondary object» (Plato, II 399). The service rendered to philosophy by Plato is accordingly related to the advancement of a methodology of sciences, and Grote thought it essential at the time to highlight this side of the philosopher's contribution 82 • Grote's eulogy of Plato's negative side, as providing a full philosophic justification ofliberty of thought as against convention and social prejudice should not hide, however, his respectful dealing with Plato's politics. Intellectual historians should not overlook the fact that Grote, after all, approved of the end of Plato's vision, though he rejected the means, as the constitutional machinery put to its service would have overstepped the legislator's authority. The Utilitarians shared with Plato some fundamental views, such as the idea that justice is a basic principle of social order, and that the identity of interests between governors and governed is an essential precondition for efficient administration. In commenting on the Republic, Grote confessed that «[1] ooking to ideal perfection, I think Plato is right», especially in postulating that the intrusion of sinister interests would corrupt the ruling class. In his concluding remark on the Laws, Grote admitted that in «taking leave of Plato, at the close of his longest, latest, and most affirmative composition, it is satisfactory to be able to express unqua-

go See also ].S. MILL, Autobiography, p. 15; Essays on Politics and Society [On Liberty], C.W., ed. ].M. RoBSON, Vol. XVIII, Toronto 1977, p. 251; Inaugural Address at St. Andrews, C. W., Vol. XXI, Toronto 1984, pp. 229-30. 81 See also BL Add. MSS., 29,522, fo. 9, and 29,514 (1818-1831), fo. 81. Rl According to Sparshott, Mill's option for the negative Plato was part of «a campaign to resurrect the methodical and empirical side of all western thought», Collected Works, Vol. XI, p. XIX.

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lified sympathy with this main purpose», namely, the happiness of the whole community (Plato, III 211-2, 459-60). Earlier, in the History o/ Greece, Grote spoke of the influence of Plato on the young Dion in a manner worth reproducing: «The influence of Plato during his youth stamped his mature character ... Still, Dion had no experience of the working of a free and popular government. The atmosphere in which his youth was passed, was that of an energetic despotism; while the aspiration which he imbibed from Plato was, to restrain and regularise that despotism, and to administer to the people a certain dose of political liberty, yet reserving to himself the task of settling how much was good for them, and the power of preventing them from acquiring more» 83 .

IV Grote managed to combine the approach of an analytically-minded philosopher with sympathetic treatment of Plato, and the laborious outcome has merited a conspicuous place in the history of Platonic interpretation. I have only tried to touch on what Grote himself might consider most important in terms of approaching Plato, and not to insist on his utilitarian influences. As I said at the beginning, Grote had a standpoint and a set of controlling ideas of which he could not divest himself, thus his tendency to interpret and illucidate Plato's meanings in the light of modern ethical debates and the principles of consequentialist utilitarianism 84 • But as a classical scholar, and even as a utilitarian,

History of Greece, Vol. XI, p. 113. Grote made Plato anticipate modern concepts, as for instance, the theory of Association. Grote also creates the impression that in criticizing Plato's selfregarding ethics (the doctrine of the all-sufficiency of virtue to the happiness of the virtuous agent, whatever may be his fate in other respects), he criticizes Hutcheson's System of Moral Philosophy (1755), or Sir James Mackintosh Progress of Ethical Phzlosophy (1830). SeeM. O'BRIEN, Modern Philosophy and Platonic Ethics, 199, 1866, p. 108; H. SIDGWICK, The Sophists, in his Lectures on the Philosophy a/Kant, London 1905, p. 323; F.D. MAURICE, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, London 1882, Vol. I, p. 117; T. GoMPERZ, Greek Thinkers, Vol. II, p. 104. On Grote's contribution to Greek historiography, see W. W. GOODWIN, Grote's Greece, «North American RevieW>> 78, 1854, p. 173; J. T. CHAMPLIN, Grote's Greece, «Christian Review» 16, 1851, p. 492; G.H. EMERSON, Grote's History of Greece, «Universalist Quarterly» 14, 1857, p. 65; W. SMITH, Grote's History of Greece, > n.s. 31, 1866, quoted in Minor Works of George Grote, ed. A. BAIN, London 1873, pp. 283-284. 14 Quoted from PLATO, Republic, 531e. See also Protagoras, 336b9-cl (giving and receiving logoi is part of the process of mutual clarification and explanation that constitutes dialectical discussion). See Minor Works, p. 284: «Of all persons whom we have known, Mr. James Mill was the one who stood least remote from the lofty Platonic ideal of Dialectic ... , competent alike to examine others, or to be examined by them on philosophy>>. As his son remarked, «There is no author to whom my father thought himself more indebted for his own mental culture, than Plato, or whom he more frequently recommended to young students». J.S. MILL, Autobiography, ed. }ACK STILLINGER, Oxford 1971, p. 14.

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no systematic work on Plato, except from the material I will briefly present below. How can we account for the fact that both Mills, father and son, left us no independent study on Plato? It was not, of course, a matter of self-confidence (they were both Greek scholars of the highest rank), nor were lacking in incentives. One can only speculate on the reasons for this strange lacuna in both Mills' literary activity. I hope that a tentative answer (at least as regards the elder Mill) will come out by the end of next paragraph which concentrates on the meaning and implications of Mill's Platonic exegesis. In the review essays quoted above, Mill was primarily reacting to Taylor's inaccurate translations and allegedly obscure commentaries on Plato's dialogues, which were imbued with neoplatonic mysticism, and reconstructed in ways tending to embody his idiosyncratic paganism. It has been the fate of Plato, Mill argued, to be seen through the allegorising theories of those «charlatans of ancient philosophy», the Alexandrian thinkers. Thus even in modern times, Mill complained, Plato's philosophy is still blended with an audacious spirit of mysticism and irrationality. The Neoplatonists had presented Plato as the most affirmative of all human beings whereas one «of the most remarkable features of the writings of Plato is, that he affirms nothing» 15 • According to Mill, Plato «adhered to the rule of his master [Socrates]; played with the theories of others, and advanced nothing seriously himself» 16 . Plato's fundamental objective, in Mill's judgment, was to encourage speculation, to give specimens of investigation, and to make his students capable of discerning and exposing fallacies. The affirmative purpose even of such compositions as the Phaedo, Republic and the Laws (traditionally regarded as cornerstones of Plato's dogmatic edifice) is thus surprisingly dismissed. Plato's business in them, was «to give specimens of investigation, to let in rays of light, to analyse particular points ... rather than lay

15

16

}AMES MILL, Taylor's Plato, «Edinburgh RevieW>> 14, 1809, p. 199. MILL, Taylor's Translation of Plato, «Literary Journal» 3, 1804, p. 453.

VII 42

down and establish any system of opinions» 17 . The chief object of these dialogues was, in Mill's view, inquiry per se. By disregarding the different elements between the dialogues of search and those of exposition, the elder Mill could completely identify the philosophical priorities of Plato with the methodology expounded by Socrates. This was the substance of James Mill's Platonism in the early nineteenth century: Plato's philosophy is important because it effectively advanced a methodology of moral science. So, going back to my question: Why did Mill never embark upon a full-fledged project to extensively analyse Plato? Because at the threshold of the nineteenth century he may have been satisfied with presenting Plato as a thinker devoid of any dogmas or set of beliefs. So bringing to the foreground Plato's method of philosophical inquiry, which was indistinguishable from Socratic dialectic, was offered as the only viable alternative reading. James Mill, a Scottish philosopher embracing the objectivist moral theory of the Common Sense School (which at a later time became blended with Utilitarianism), believed that there was nothing else to write about Plato, or deserving to be written, at least from the perspective of an analytical and moral philosopher 18 • That was all that could be said about the author of the Timaeus! Yet, this is only the first half of the story regarding James Mill's Platonism. By the 1830s he could unambiguously declare his endorsement of certain principles of political rule exhibited in the Republic, insinuating that whatever disagreement between his own theory of government and Plato's was due to the latter's imperfect anticipation of utilitarian philosophy as well as due to his ignorance of the «divine principle of representation». But whatever differences remained between them were ultimately overshadowed by agreement on fundamentals. It is such a commonality (of aims and objectives) which might have induced Mill to write an article - in a dialogue Taylor's Plato, p. 199. See KNUD HAAKONSSEN, James Mill and Scottish Moral Philosophy, «Political Studies» 33, 1985, pp. 628-641. 17

18

MILL,

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form- in which he explicitly defended Platonic elitism. «We think it best», he argued confidently, «that government should be placed in the hands of the Aristoi and Beltistoi» 19 • Mill's revised position can only be understood in the light of his well-known role and activity within the utilitarian circle. At the threshold of the century he was not bound to defend any system of philosophy as resolutely as he was following his meeting with Bentham (in all likelihood in 1808)20 • It is not surprising at all that apart from Plato the methodologist, Plato the dogmatist should have been invoked to serve the politics of utilitarianism. As Terence Ball has recently argued, while James Mill, on his son's testimony, had an abiding respect for the «utility of Plato's dialectical method of question and answer, conjecture and refutation», his «substantive doctrines are also decidedly Platonic». James Mill's arguments in support of Bentham's views on discipline and punishment provide, according to Ball, a case in point2 1• In his 1809 review James Mill, deploring the «impenetrable darkness» with which Plato was wrapped up in the work of Taylor, called for the qualified scholar who would «convert the beautiful Greek of Plato, into beautiful English», and explain «the nature, spirit, and tendency of his writings». That scholar was John Stuart. Between 1834 and 1835 (interestingly at the time he began working on Logic) the youthful Mill published in the Monthly Repository lengthy fragmentary translations of the Protagoras, Phaedrus, Gorgias, and the Apology - the last composition being entirely translated. It is not clear when and why these translations were written; they were not

19 }AMES

MILL,

The Ballot- A Dialogue, «Westminster Review» 13, 1830, pp.

37-38. 20

See A.

21

BALL,

BAIN, James Mill: A Biography, London 1882, pp. 71ff. Reappraising Political Theory, p. 166. For Grote's own appreciation

of Plato's theory of punishment (punishment for the purpose of prevention), which implies his belief that (as sentient or noetic subject) and not that «every opinion of every man is true» (pace Plato) it' was in order to defend the unconditional autonomy of individual judg-

had much influence. At the time when they were published (1876) they probably seemed like a voice from the past, as indeed they were». 60 See IRWIN, Mill and the Classical World, pp. 431-432, 438. According to Irwin, «This division between Grote and Mill emerges more sharply from their different treatments of questions about liberty that preoccupied both of them». Mill's views, according to Irwin, «depart from the version of utilitarianism that Grote shared with James Mill». The idea that Grote's mind remained static is not a new one. But even if we concede that there are substantial differences between their understanding of the relations between freedom, democracy and social sentiment, the thesis of this paper remains unaffected: that the direction of Grote's platonic interpretation and his assessment of the comparative value of the negative and the positive elements in Plato were largely guided by the central arguments in Logic and On Liberty. 61 Protagoras is the philosopher closest to Mill, according to Urbinati, because his doctrines accepted both the need of deliberative competence (and thus mass participation at the level of political deliberation), and expert competence in government, for which special ability and training is required.

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ment against aprioristic absolutism and intuition62 • The homo- mensura doctrine, he believed, proclaims emphatically «the paramount authority of individual reason and conscience», which is the basis of philosophy as «reasoned truth» 63 • Would it be oxymoronic to say that it is Grote in his zeal to defend the Millian notion of individuality expounded in On Liberty that Mill himself paradoxically criticizes? 64

62 See the whole chapter on Plato's Theaetetus, Plato, vol. II, pp. 319-395. Protagoras' doctrine is «the only basis upon which philosophy or 'reasoned truth' can stand», because it proclaims unqualified recognition of the right to dissent from prescribed orthodoxies, and promotes «argumentative scrutiny» (vol. II, p. 358). See also, Plato, vol. II, p. 440, «the Protagorean dictum was really a negation of the Absolute, of the Thing in itself, of the Object without a Subject», etc. See, further, vol. II, p. 511. 63 Plato, vol. I, p. 303 and vol. II, p. 358. 64 I would like to express my thankfulness to Peter Nicholson, Fred Rosen, and Thornton Lockwood who have read and commented on an earlier version of this paper. Thanks are also due to Janet Coleman, Arlene Saxonhouse and Philip Schofield for useful remarks and an inspiring discussion at the presentation of this paper at the University of Cyprus in October 2005.

VIII

THE REVIVAL OF A LEGEND: THE DEBATE OVER PLATO IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN

All false philosophy is Plato misinterpreted; All true philosophy is Plato rightly understood. James Frederick Ferrier (1808-64)

Thirty years ago there was still no critical study of the reception and interpretation of Plato. In his pioneering slim volume, published in 1977, Eugene N. Tigerstedt presented a critical account of a number of schools of Platonic interpretation, rightly pointing out that «the dispute between the various schools of Platonic interpreters is not confined to judgement and evaluation but concerns the very essence of Platonism» 1. Indeed, with Plato more than with any other thinker, interpretations tend to mirror the philosophical and ideological positions of the interpreters. Focussing especially on German scholarship, Tigerstedt emphasized how diverse and often contradictory results were produced by looking at Plato from different philosophical perspectives. Nevertheless, while suggesting that the philosophy of Kant and Hegel lies behind numerous British Platonic interpreters, especially those largely attached to Idealism, he left the subject comparatively unexplored. A critical discussion of the modern reception of Plato- set in a broader historical and intel-

1

E.N. T!GERSTEDT, Interpreting Plato, Stockholm 1977, p. 13.

VIII 60

lectual perspective - has been recently published by Melissa Lane, partly filling that lacuna, though her study - despite its insightful and learned scholarship - surprisingly leaves important relevant sources unexamined2 . My own contribution to the debate consists of a recent attempt to provide a critical bibliographical record on modern Platonic interpretation, ranging from the early 1930s to the late 195 Os 3 . My major thesis was not a new one, being hinted at or directly pursued (as in Lane) in earlier studies. I think useful to repeat it: From the early 1930s to the late 1950s many scholars, whether liberal-minded or socialist ideologues, Marxist or scientific positivists, classical scholars or political theorists and historians, have shown a widespread consensus in discrediting and assailing Plato. Such an extensive assault was, philosophically, a reaction to the undisguised Platonolatry coming from Oxford and the school of the British Idealists. Ideologically, the vehement indictment was prompted by the appropriation of Plato by Nazi apologists - an appropriation that resulted in a fundamentally distorted Platonbild, especially among the members of the so-called George-Kreis. In their works, Plato is extolled as the prophet and forerunner of Fascism, the intellectual precursor of a rigidly stratified society (an aristocratic Reich), as «der Stifter eines neuen Kultus, der Fuhrer und Menschenbildner>>4 .

2 M. LANE, Plato's Progeny: How Plato and Socrates still Captivate the Modern Mind, London 2001. Other sources that specifically examine the invocation of Plato in the nineteenth century are: J. GLUCKER, Plato in England: the Nineteenth Century and After, in H. FUNKE (ed.), Utopie und Tradition: Platons Lehre vom Staat in der Moderne, Wiirzburg 1987, pp. 149-210; M.F. BURNYEAT, The Past in the Present: Plato as Educator of Nineteenth-Century Britain, in A.O. RORTY (ed.), Philosophers on Education, London 1998, pp. 353-373. 3 K.N. DEMETRIOU, A "Legend" in Crisis: The Debate over Plato's Politics, 1930-1960, «Polis» 19,2002, pp. 61-93. 4 H. LEISEGANG, Die Platondeutung der Gegenwart, Karlsruhe in Baden 1929, p. 44. See alsop. 165 below: «Platons Gedanken iiber den idealen Staat sind im Sinne des Kommunismus und Sozialismus ebenso ausgeschlachtet wor-

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But a lot of other causes contributed to the condescending or, at best, critical attitude to Plato's political ideas. The general anguish on the eve of World War II and the post-war traumas led scholars to reconsider the meaning of history and historicism, the psychology of the masses and political obligation, the role of propaganda and state education. Such complementary elements converged in sustained anti-Platonic polemics. In my former paper I sought to bring to light bibliographical sources now largely neglected as expressions of academic hysteria generated by the appalling political turbulence. The conclusion was that, despite the palpable ideological diversity and different philosophical backgrounds of the Platonic detractors, the crystallized anti-Platonic trait was to a certain degree a continuation of the polemic against philosophical idealism and the so-called «metaphysical theory of the state». The purpose of this work is to continue the journey backwards: to trace and comment on sources directly related to the history of the political interpretation of Platonism - literature which led the «Platonic Legend» into that unprecedented crisis and which was not fully or adequately presented in my earlier work. The paper is dividen wie sie heute auf der entgegengesetzten Seite von den Deutschviilkischen und den Rassentheoretikern zur Stiitzung und Verklarung ihrer politischen Ideen herangezogen werden». Kurt Singer in his Platon, der Grunder, Miinchen 1927, p. 148, argued that Plato's Republic «enthalt keine Nachlese von einzelnen Gedanken und Bildern, wie man wohl gewahnt hat, sondern die Verdichtung des Geistes selber, aus dem das gauze Werk geschrieben ist. Es ist der Geist des Gerichts, der Siihne, der Entscheidung und des Sterns. Der Eine, der den kommenden Tod der alten Giitter geschaut hat, drang auch als erster auf das Eine, was not tut, auf die Verengung des Lebenskreises, die Reinigung der Gemeinschaft, die Hartung des Gestaltungswillens». The classic pattern of a perfectly political man, the nation~l citizen connected at the same time with national humanism, was, according to LOTHAR HELBING (1902-86), the author of Der dritte Humanismus (1932), no one else but Plato. (Quoted in A. LIEBERT, Contemporary German Philosophy, «Philosophical RevieW>> 45, 1936, p. 49). More sources on the German reception of Plato at this period are cited in my "Legend" in Crisis, pp. 67-68 fn.

VIII 62 ded into two sections: the first probes into the uses of Plato in the first half of the nineteenth century, ending with Grote's 1865 monumental Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates. The second section discusses the appropriation of Plato by the British Idealists (or those who at least shared some of the idealists' views on the importance of Plato) and shows how that appropriation had a formative influence on subsequent Platonic interpretation. Works written in the light of philosophical idealism were essentially unanimous in stressing the unitary philosophical genius of Plato, while emphasizing the value of his moral and political thought for counterbalancing the allegedly extreme individualism and commercialism of the modern age.

I. Plato: Utilitarian or Christian? In the «Preface» to the first edition of the Dialogues of Plato, Benjamin Jowett (1817 -93 ), Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, protested against Grote's interpretation of Plato, informing his rea- · dership that the aim of his introduction was «to represent Plato as the father of Idealism, who is not to be measured by the standard of utilitarianism or any other modern philosophical system ... He may be illustrated by the writings of moderns, but he must be interpreted by his own, and by his place in the history of philosophy»5 . Profoundly a contradiction in terms (for what is Idealism if not a «modern philosophical system»?), Jowett's statement can be treated as a turning point in the history of modern Platonic interpretation. It is Idealism that dominated Platonic studies until the end of the Victorian era, paving the way, as we shall see, for the modern attacks

5 B. JOWETT, The Dialogues of Plato, Oxford 1871, p. 1, «Preface». On Jowett's interpretation, see the insightful account in F.M. TURNER, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, New Haven and London 1981, pp. 415-431.

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on Plato. A reaction was only to be expected, and the rise of Nazism and Fascism just intensified the vigorous assault. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Paul Shorey (1857-1934) could speculate on the chief causes «of distaste for Plato». Plato, according to Shorey, «is supposed to be undemocratic, aristocratic, bookish, antiscientific, scholastic. Some regard him with suspicion as the covert ally of mysticism and superstition. To many wholesome natures the entire rhetoric of poetical idealism and Platonic love is repugnant» 6 . The pervasiveness of Idealism in Platonic exegesis in the last third of the nineteenth century was not just the outcome of academic controversies, either literary or philosophical, but was embedded in the concrete circumstances of the epoch. It was partly political ideology revolving around aspirations for socialist reform, based on a new concept of restrained individualism in the context of the growing nation-states that dictated the modern reconstruction of Platonic philosophy. In effect, political Ideology had always been a powerful tool in Platonic interpretation since the late eighteenth century. But at the time of Jowett, Platonic exegesis was specifically influenced by two parallel and equally fertile currents of thought one negative and the other positive: the first was stimulated via a reaction to Grote's Platonic analysis, and the second owed its origins to the rapid dissemination of Hegelianism in England. Grote's Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates revolutionized Platonic studies in Britain. The field was indeed barren ground before this monumental work. At the universities only those dialo-

6 PAUL SHOREY, Platonism Ancient and Modern, California 1938, p. 233. See also W.K.C. GUTHRIE, Twentieth-century Approaches to Plato, in Lectures in Memory of Louise Taft Semple, first series 1961·1965, Princeton 1967, pp. 229260. Plato's alleged homosexuality, as a determinant of his political and pedagogical activity, was the subject of ll"'NS KELSEN's paper on Die platonische Liebe, published in the Freudian journal «Imago» 19, 1933, pp. 34-98,225-255.

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gues directly related to Socrates were studied, and emphasis was placed on grammar and literary features 7 . The translations of Floyer Sydenham (1710-87) and Thomas Taylor (i758-1835) published at the threshold of the nineteenth century were inaccurate and naturally provoked the memorable double protest by the utilitarian philosopher and historian of British India James Mill (1773-1836). The unmistakable merits of Sydenham's scholarship were spoiled and eventually overshadowed by the obscure commentaries of Taylor, which were imbued by the mystical traits of his character and his monomania in reading Plato through the eyes of Neo-Platonism8 . The utilitarians, despite Bentham's vitriolic comment in Deontology that the Greek philosopher was «the master manufacturer of nonsense», as well as their natural inclination towards the liberal and empiricist intellectual tradition, were enthused by Plato and liked to be called «Platonists»9 . James Mill has always been mentioned as an enthusiastic and lifelong devoted Platonist. Within the utilitarian circle he was reported to have constantly urged for a scholarly faithful restoration of Plato's philosophical credentials. His protest against the poverty of Platonic studies is perhaps one of the earliest recorded in British bibliography. At the beginning of the

7 On eighteenth-century and Victorian Platonism see K.N. DEMETRIOU, George Grote on Plato and Athenian Democracy. A Study in Classical Reception, Frankfurt am Main 1999, chapters. 5-6; R. JENKYNS, The Victorians and Ancient Greece, Oxford 1980, p. 228; M.L. CLARKE, Greek Studies in England: 17001830, Cambridge 1945, p. 112. 8 F. SYDENHAM and Th. TAYLOR, The Works of Plato, 5 vols., London 1804. Sydenham's scholarship is transparent in his Synopsis or General View of the Works of Plato, London 1759. See JAMES MILL'S protest, Taylor's Translation of Plato, «The Literary Journal» 3, 1804, pp. 449-461; Taylor's Plato, «Edinburgh Review» 14,1809, pp. 187-211. 9 J. BENTHAM, Deontology, ed. A. GOLDWORTH, Oxford 1983, p. 137. See alsop. 135: «while Xenophon was writing history, and Euclid giving instructions in geometry, Socrates and Plato were talking nonsense, under pretence of teaching wisdom».

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nineteenth century, the elder Mill had to rival Taylor's Neoplatonic version of Plato and its transcendentalist reverberations. In his quest to unravel the secret of Plato, Taylor presented the Greek philosopher as the most affirmative of all human beings, understood only by those initiated into the esoteric aspects of his teaching, whereas the philosopher's chief object in the dialogues, Mill asserted, was inquiry per se. In his polemical review of Taylor, Mill went even further and refused to acknowledge the existence of a systematically dogmatic side of Platonic thought. A new definition of Platonism Platonism devoid of dogmas - was born. Yet in the 1830s the utilitarian philosopher could unambiguously declare his endorsement of certain principles of political rule exhibited in the Republic, inasmuch as they «may be regarded as a development, and, in many of its parts, a masterly development, of the principle applied by Mr. Mill; that identity of interests between the · governors and the governed affords the only security for good government». Whatever disagreement between them - that is, whatever imperfections in the anticipation of utilitarian philosophy by Plato -, especially due to Plato's regretful resort to communism and exclusion, was rooted in the latter;s ignorance of the «divine principle of representation». Thus whatever philosophical differences existed in their works, either of substance or of detail, were eventually overshadowed by a fundamental agreement in their theory of government. It is such a common ground, related to the theory of government, which might have induced Mill to write an article in a dialogue form in which he explicitly defended Platonic elitism. «We think it best», he argued confidently, «that government should be placed in the hands of the Aristoi; not only in the sense of the Greeks, who understood by it only the Rich. We only desire that it be placed in the hands of the rich upon such terms as will make them the Aristoi [aristocracy] and Beltistoi [best]». Mill's position is thoroughly consistent with his systematic effort, following his meeting with Bentham and the utilitarians, to make Plato into a utilita-

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rian by associating the principle of utility with the philosopher's idea of «the Good» 10 . In 1809 James Mill, deploring the «impenetrable darkness» with which Plato was covered in the work of Taylor, called for the qualified scholar who would «convert the beautiful Greek of Plato, into beautiful English», and explain in commentaries «the nature, spirit, and tendency of his writings» 11 • Not surprisingly, the first serious initiative originated with his son, John Stuart Mill. Between the years 1834 and 1835 the youthful Mill published in the popular Monthly Repository lengthy fragmentary translations of the Protagoras, Phaedrus and Gorgias, the Apology being translated in full 12 . Like his father, J.S. Mill complained that there were no deserving commentaries on Plato in English, and the few existing were based on a selective looting of ideas from the dialogues, mostly of a metaphysical or religious vein. For the younger Mill, the traditional exegesis was totally untrustworthy and the positiveness ascribed to Plato's philosophy essentially questionable: «it is to this day a problem whether Plato had a philosophy: if he had, it certainly was not the philosophy of those who have called themselves Platonists». 10 J. MILL, A Fragment on Mackintosh, London 1835, pp. 285, 311; The Ballot- A Dialogue, «Westminster RevieW>> 13, 1830, pp. 37-38. T. GOMPERZ interestingly noted that the «sober champions of utility and severe rationalism claim Plato for their intellectual ancestor», a statement which is partly correct, Greek Thinkers, London 1901-1912, vol. II, p. 250. 11 J. MILL, Taylor's Plato, p. 191. 12 SeeR. BORCHARDT (ed.), Four Dialogues of Plato, trans. with notes by J.S. MILL, London 1946. Actually Mill prepared nine commentary-translations which included minor dialogues as well as the Parmenides. They were left in manuscript form until 1978 when they appeared in the Collected Works, vol. XI: Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, ed. J.M. RoBSON, Toronto 1978, pp. 175238. It is interesting that John Forster, the prolific historian and biographer, in commenting on the four dialogues published in 1834-1835, spoke of «an admirable version ... It is much the best that we have seen: indeed it is the only one that will bear the least comparison with the original», The Dialogues of Plato, «Foreign Quarterly RevieW>> 31, 1843, p. 475 n.

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Thus, both Mills saw in fact «two Platos in Plato», the Socratist and the dogmatist. If they opted for the former, it was not because they wholeheartedly rejected the latter, but because the· dogmatic phase of Platonism - whatever its merits in the sphere of political theory - appeared to them of no service to any improved view respecting the methodology of philosophical analysis. In conformity to their epistemological priorities, the utilitarians admired the Socratic method, because they believed it could constructively assist in the development of philosophy as «reasoned truth». Socratic teaching was not to be estimated by its positive results or affirmative propositions, but by the intellectual process it originated in their quest. Plato likewise, in the footsteps of his mentor, forcefully advanced the proper mode of philosophizing and particularized the spirit in which such inquiries should be conducted. Even in his late writings, and particularly in the Autobiography, ].S. Mill ascribed the title of «Platonist» to those nourished on Plato's mode of investigation, rather than to those propounding dogmas by resting on the «least intelligible» of Plato's dialogues. The title deservedly belongs, Mill argued, to those who believe in the intrinsic value of Socratic dialectic, which is essentially a negative process. The Socratic elenchus, as systematically applied by Plato, is the supreme means to the correction of errors that are «incident to the intellectus sibi permissus», and as such it is a most valuable tool in remedying modern philosophers' propensity to self-complacency 13 • While the two Mills had asked for a «scholarly>> reconstruction of Platonic thought, Lord Macaulay (1800-59) was an early nineteenth-century Platonic detractor. In the 1837 Edinburgh Review, Macaulay declared condescendingly that Plato's speculative philo-

13 J.S. MILL, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, pp. 39-40, 415; Autobiography, ed. J. STILLINGER, London and Oxford 1971, pp. 14-15. See also The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, ed. J. STILLINGER, Urbana 1961, p. 48.

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sophy was impractical and irrelevant to an Age of Progress. Plato's «celebrated philosophy» ended in nothing but disputation, empty dialectical and rhetorical art; «useful» truths are absolutely wanting. Far different was the philosophy of Francis Bacon, and it is to that rational philosophy - which aimed at the discovery of scientific truths that should govern human life and make easier «the happiness of every society»- that the moderns must turn their attention 14 . Macaulay's preference for Bacon was not irrelevant to his ideological stance. The enthusiasm of utilitarian or liberal scholars for Baconian .epistemology and Hobbesian politics was by no means accidental as they fitted in with their own philosophical conceptions 15 . The spell of utilitarianism, secular ethics and political radicalism, would gradually lead to the recovery of Platonic philosophy. The doctrines of the Greek philosopher were expected to provide a moral antidote to a generation thought to be poisoned by atheistic maxims and scientific naturalism 16 . Thus William Sewell (1804-74), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford and sometime member of the Tractarian movement, turned to Plato's doctrines to find a plea for «Christian politics». In Plato, Sewell saw essentially a protoChristian, ascetic and saintly. Plato, he believed, developed a lively unified moral and philosophical system out of a reaction to the chaos and ethical degeneracy of Athenian democracy. His first priority was to crush sophistic relativism by promulgating the immutable principles of morals. His object, all things considered, was uniformly religious. The analogue between democratic Athens and England was, in Sewell's mind, profound, and hence the importance of Platonism for the moderns transparently clear:

14 LADY TREVELYAN (ed.), Miscellaneous Works a/Lord Macaulay, New York, n.d., vol.II, pp. 412-413,425-428. 15 Characteristically, the standard edition of Hobbes's English and Latin works to this day remains William Molesworth's (1810-1855), himself a utilitarian and close friend of Grote. 16 See TURNER, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, p. 374.

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If oral instruction is diminishing, so it was at Athens; if books are multiplying upon us, and books of the most frivolous kind, so it was at Athens; if a shifting and changing of opinion has destroyed all confidence in public men, so it was Athens; if the infection has been spread from abroad, and smuggled in, like other diseases, through the wars of Germany and France, so it was at Athens. Their sophists were also foreigners 17 .

Platonism thus involved a theistic idealism peculiarly modern and intrinsically worldly, in the sense that it was expected to answer the moral needs of contemporary society. It was to the «mighty Interpreter of the human Soul», that also turned his eyes William Archer Butler (1814-1848), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin. Plato, according to Butler, presents the most permanent monument ever established by unassisted human thought. The philosopher's popularity among Christians depends not only on the coincidence of occasional phraseology, but also on a wide spectrum of compatible doctrines, like those on human nature and the character of the Deity. «Untaught ... by any supernatural instructor, . [Plato] could see reflected in the human reason the divine, and catch from the mysterious caverns of the soul yet imprisoned in flesh, dim echoes of another world!» Like Sewell, Butler believed that the orientation of Platonic speculation was substantially religious in character, and thus he was inclined to endowit with a high degree of internal unity and homogeneity. Plato's philosophical universe of ideas is related to God: more precisely, Platonism is a structure and a system raised to advance the principles of eternal and immutable laws. Such a solid philosophical universe is uniquely valuable, Butler argued, especially in times of the «dangerous excess» of utilitarianism «into which the present and the last age (especially in our own country) have universally fallen» 18 . 17 W. SEWELL, An Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato,

London 1841, pp.

75-76. 18 W.A. BUlLER, Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, ed. W.H. Thompson, 2 vols., Cambridge 1856, vol. II, pp. 56, 160.

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The philosophical analyst of Christianity, the Bishop of Hereford, Renn Dickson Hampden (1793-1868), espoused alike the transcendental interpretation of Plato. In his work, Plato is unequivocally Christianized. Plato gave an inspired battle against the «corruption and evils» of his generation. The philosopher felt a «strong disgust, not unmixed with contemptuous feeling», at the state of misrule into which the democracy of Athens had degenerated in his day, and sought retreat in calm meditations. His whole life was in effect a crusade against the sophistic principles of «Experience philosophy», which he sought to replace with the unchallengeable and eternal truths deriving from «Divine Authority». The empirical methodology and secularist system of values of the sophists were, in Hampden's judgment, «the crying evil of those times. It had infected politics, and education, and private intercourse, as well as philosophy». In Britain, utilitarian empiricism was likewise infecting the younger generation with subversive doctrines, distrust of intuition and natural affections, and a lamentable hatred for the Creator 19 . The absorbing concern behind any initiative to resurrect Plato, at least until the time Jowett set out to explore Plato in the light of Hegelian Idealism, was evidently to check utilitarian thought and its derivatives, atheism or agnosticism. Utilitarians, like Bentham and John Stuart Mill, on the other hand, were inclined to treat religion as a psychological phenomenon, and went so far as to envision the secularization of religious sentiments so that they could be socially useful. An adversary of utilitarian moral and political philosophy, John Stuart Blackie (1809-95), Professor of Greek at Edinburgh University, attempted to demonstrate that the Platonic theory of Good was the exact equivalent to the Christian idea of God. In his Plato and Christianity, the Scottish classical scholar and Hellenist reasserted Plato's service to Christianity, supposedly achieved throu-

19 R.D. HAMPDEN, The Fathers of Greek Philosophy, Edinburgh 1862, pp. 207-208,240, 284.

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gh natural unassisted reason. Convinced that there were essential points of coincidence between Plato's symbolic speculation and Christian faith, Blackie went on to vindicate the convergence of the philosopher's system on matters related to the Divine Nature (the supreme causative principle); the Nature of Man (or the origin, character and value of human ideas and actions); and the Philosophy of Human Life, the scheme of Providence, and future life. All these doctrines were subsequently incorporated in Christian tradition and St. Paul's teaching 20 . Not surprisingly, Blackie's Plato eventually emerges as the great philosophical prophet and progenitor of Christianity - its philosopher par excellence. Nevertheless, the «too square, too rough, too real, too utilitarian, too much like a dish of solid ... pottage» brains of Englishmen and Scottish were unable to catch the transcendental drift and complexion of Plato's philosophiZing.

The underlying purpose of Grote's Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates was to crush such interpretations and exhibit the complexity and pluralism of the dialogues. Written in the light of the younger Mill's essay On Liberty (1859), the uncompromising manifesto of modern liberalism, the Plato turned into a spirited defence of individual freedom especially through the application of a ruthless criticism to Plato's suppression of individuality in the so-called constructive or affirmative dialogues. Grote first examined the external evidence for the received Platonic canon and defended the authenticity of all minor dialogues transmitted from antiquity on the Thrasyllean

20 BLACKIE, Plato and Christianity, «North British RevieW>> 35, 1861, pp. 369-373; Plato, in Edinburgh Essays by Members of the University, Edinburgh 1857, pp. 4, 9. In his Four Phases a/Morals, pp. 404-405,James Mill is criticized for misrepresenting the intended meanings of Plato: Mill, Blackie maintained, «studied at the University of Edinburgh in the days of the great metaphysical school ... and devoted considerable attention to Plato ... ; but if Mill did study Plato thoroughly, it must have been, as Grote has done in our time, for the purpose of not understanding him».

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classification. In doing so, the historian challenged the long-standing interpretation of Platonism as a fixed body of dogma, a view that minimized the tentative and less systematic aspects of the corpus. At the same time he addressed a severe criticism to the reconstructive schemes of German scholars who, by eliminating all incompatibilities and contradictions that exist in the dialogues, argued in favour of a premeditated philosophical scheme. Eliminating all incompatibilities and variations meant in effect that a large number of less conclusive or tP.ntative pieces were judged inferior and declared spurious. In short, the distinction between the searching and the affirmative phase of Plato allowed Grote to insist on the existence of a considerable degree of inconsistency in the Platonic scheme. The Platonic corpus, Grote argued, was an aggregate of multifarious works, variable in form and purpose. In the «searching» group Plato left us deliberately inconclusive works, which reflected a remarkable awareness of the diversity of human intellectual experience. In them, Plato followed the genuine path of logical inquiry and adhered to analytical methodology. Freedom of thought was firmly vindicated. On the other hand, when the philosopher propounded a positive doctrine, he regrettably dismissed rational Socratic dialectic and elenchus, appearing in the gloomy guise of a preceptor or a priest. The expository state no longer involved philosophy, the quest for «reasoned truth» which Socrates so vividly exemplified in his oral teaching. Grote's work on Plato never became «the standard textbook on the philosopher», as Ogilvie suggested, but it certainly motivated a great number of introductions and interpretative essays on some of Plato's most important dialogues 21 . To many scholars Grote's Platonic analysis appeared a disguised advocacy of philosophical radicalism, and thus in many respects a misinterpretation of Plato's

21 R.M. OGILVIE, Latin and Greek. A History of the Influence of the Classics on English Life/rom 1600 to 1918, London 1964, p. 124.

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thought22 . Utilitarianism, in its atheistic and secular proclivities, was a philosophical system that did not appeal to wide circles in Victorian Britain. According to Thomas Hare (1806-1891), the political reformer, Grote could never disentangle himself from the «trammels of pure Benthamism», and his Plato was destined to convey a distorted image of Plato's «ethereal charm, his exquisite grace, his subtle humour, his distinction» - all of which vanished in the face of a destructive analysis 23 . The historian James Richard Thursfield (1840-1923), ventured to predict that the Plato «will be talked of by many, read by few, and thoroughly appreciated by tewer still». Plato, Thursfield argued, was always the bulwark of conservatives, and now Grote set out to overturn the conventional idea of the philosopher. He tried to show that the position Plato occupies in the history of philosophy is due to the searching and critical character of his investigations, rather than to his expository schemes or dogmas. But this conclusion alone would greatly displease the traditional Platonist, the scholar who adheres to the philosopher as a great constructive genius, the «idealist and poetic dreamer». This «Platonist» would not feel at home with Grote's rationalized Plato24 . On the same line the classical scholar Lewis Campbell (18301908), editor of Plato's Theaetetus (1861), Sophistes and Politicus (1867), objected rigorously to Grote's sharp distinction between the dialogues of Search and the dialogues of Exposition. Positive and negative compositions, Campbell argued, are substantially intermingled, in the sense that Plato's negative procedures had always a definite positive aim. Campbell's major disagreement, however, cancer-

22

On the reception of Grote's historical and philosophical works, see K.N.

DEMETRIOU (ed.), Classics in the Nineteenth Century. Responses to George Grote,

Bristol2004, 4 vols. 23 T. HARE, The Personal Life of George Grote, 24, 1871, pp. 81-83.

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argued that Grote «belongs to the sensational school of Mill and Bain rather than to that of Plato, and is not wholly in sympathy with him»28 • Another reviewer, who still remains unidentified, believed that Grote could not «refrain from elaborating a picture of the Platonic philosophy, and, trying it by the standard of the system he himself favours, pronounces it unsatisfactory»29. Another group of scholars attacked Grote on the grounds of misunderstanding Plato's account of Protagorean subjectivism. Grote argued, inter alia, that the Homo Mensura doctrine of Protagoras, extending to the whole world of phenomenal and noumenal objects, offers the only basis on which philosophy as «reasoned truth» could stand. The formula of the sophist allowed freethinking, while safeguarding mutual respect and toleration. Grote's critics received this argument as being equal to a vindication of an all-embracing theory of relativism, scientific and ethical, that resulted in negating the possibility of objective truth. Campbell did not hesitate to argue that Grote's analysis of the man-measure doctrine was similar to Pyrrhonian scepticism, inasmuch as it confounded mere individual belief with a belief grounded on evidence. Edward Meredith Cope (1818-1873 ), translator of the Phaedo, produced a separate work to refute Grote. His principal object was to defend Plato against the charges of prejudice and inconsistency «so freely brought against him by Mr Grote in his recent work». The Cambridge scholar believed that Protagoras had taken a narrower view of the man-measure doctrine than Grote assumed. Of course, the protest raised against Grote's interpretation of Protagorean thought was just a part of the wider reaction to his overall defence of the sophists, as mostly exemplified in the works of Cope and John Stuart Blackie-3°. A. DAY, Summary and Analysis of the Dialogues of Plato, London 1870, p. IV. Plato, «London Quarterly Review» 37, 1871, p. 79. 3 CoPE, The Sophists, «The Journal of Classical aod Sacred Philology» 1, 1854, pp. 146-148. See also On the Sophistical Rhetoric, ibid., 2, 1855, pp. 129-169. Cope 28

29 ANON., Jowett's

°

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Predictably, however, Grote's Plato had an immediate impact on liberal scholars. In his long encomiastic review, Mill argued that Grote's analysis marked a new chapter in Platonic interpretation. Unlike other critics, Mill did not detect in Grote's work any traces of hostility towards the Greek philosopher. What commentators understood as «hostile» interpretation was a shift of emphasis from the dogmatist Plato to the sceptic, dialectician philosopher. Grote, according to Mill, reacted to the German systematic approaches to the Corpus Platonicum and indeed the entire tradition of Platonic exegesis, viewing Plato foremost as the continuator of Socratic philosophizing. According to Mill, Grote correctly shed light on Plato as the philosopher who propounded in writing «the necessity of a scientific basis and method for ethics and politics, and of rigorous negative dialectics as a part of that method». Grote showed that the «enemy against whom Plato really fought, and the warfare against whom was the incessant occupation of the greater part of his life and writings, was not Sophistry, either in the ancient or the modern sense of the term, but Commonplace». He successfully proved that Plato's place in the history of philosophy is not linked to the dogmatic ethical and political speculations which he defends in his con~tructive dialogues. While Plato's philosophical significance, however, is essentially related to his dialectic discourse, it should be pointed out, according to Mill, that a careful reading of the constructive dialogues would establish that the philosopher was in many respects the predecessor

undertook to defend the traditional view of the sophists, yet he did not hesitate to dedicate to Grote his Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric, Cambridge 1867. J.S. BLACKIE,

Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism,

Edinburgh 1871. ALExANDER GRANT, the Aristotelian scholar, protested against the «paradox» of Grote's defence of the sophists in the first ed. of his Ethics ofAristotle (1857), but in 1885, in the fourth ed. of his work, could admit that .

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values and thus, to a certain degree, a philosophical Radical. But the utilitarians could discover a lot to admire in the constructive dialogues too, and especially in the Republic. While they disapproved of Plato's rigid stratification of society and detested his theory of punishment and censorship, they found much to admire in fundamental general principles. They seemed to approve of Plato's political vision, though they rejected the means to its realization as the machinery put to its service overstepped the legislator's rightful authority. Utilitarian scholars and ideologues shared with Plato some fundamental views, such as the idea that justice is a basic principle of social order, and that the identity of interests between governors and governed is an essential precondition for efficient administration. «Looking to ideal perfection», Grote wrote in commenting on the Republic, «I think Plato is right» in postulating that the intrusion of sinister interests would corrupt the ruling class. Similarly, in his concluding remark on the Laws, the historian confessed that in «taking leave of Plato, at the close of his longest, latest, and most affirmative composition, it is satisfactory to be able to express unqualified sympathy with this main purpose», namely, the happiness of the whole community36 . Further, the utilitarian reformists would side with Plato in his educational policy, 'except when aristocratic elitism cropped in. The Radicals never ceased to believe that a good government is the product of educated citizens and thus defended, both in Parliament and in writing, education for the masses. They also agreed with Plato in recommending Malthusian birth control and, to some extent, in advocating distribution of property. Understandably, what they found appealing in Plato was anathema to idealists and nationalists, who would object that what the utilita-

36 GROTE, Plato, vol. III, pp. 211-2,459-460. Earlier, in the History a/Greece Grote wrote that Dion «imbibed from Plato» the aspiration to restrain the despotic instincts which he acquired from his youth as well as «to administer to the people a certain dose of politicallibert)'>>, History of Greece, Everyman ed., London 1907, vol. XI, p. 113.

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rians praised in Platonic philosophy was purely a product of their biased interpretations and mirrored their political partisanship.

II. The Idealist Plato The legal and political philosophy of the British utilitarians obviously did not belong to what John Henry Muirhead (18551940), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham and prominent representative of the School of Idealists, called in the title of his book the «Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy». Despite the title, the book contains almost nothing about Plato himself and this did not come as a surprise. For Muirhead's purpose was to explore the idea of Plato and Platonism as a distinctive kind of philosophizing, marked by its complete antithesis to empiricism, individualism and self-regarding ethics. Accordingly, Muirhead's work first asserted the characteristics of the British philosophy that could be called «Platonic» as distinguished from the materialist or naturalist currents that had prevailed since the seventeenth century; and secondly it explored how Hegel came to England and the ways Hegelianism was eventually appropriated by certain scholars37 . A Plato scholar who was deeply impressed by Hegelian Idealism was Sir Ernest Barker (187 4-1960), the Cambridge political scientist and philosopher who aspired to reconcile English liberalism, largely centred on individualism, with the socialist ideals of his age. Barker

37 J.H. MUIRHEAD, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy, London and New York 1931. See especially chap. II, «How Hegel came to England», pp. 147-173. Muirhead was the author of Bernard Bosanquet and His Friends, London 1935. Another distinguished Platonist, J.A. NOTOPOULOS, observed that in Muirhead's study «one wonders where the ghost of Plato enters in, or why he equates one system of philosophy rather than another with Platonism», The Divided Line of the Platonic Tradition, «Journal of Philosophy» 32, 1935, p. 57.

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could claim in 1918 that the philosophy of Plato during the «last forty years» was one of the main sources of inspiration of the school represented by Green, Bradley and Bosanquet. It is under the influence of these scholars that Plato has found a new circle of disciples that include «English working men» who «have read and learned to lov-e the Republic»38 . And if Plato's «intolerance» is recognized by all who love him, as David George Ritchie (1853-1903) Professor of logic and metaphysics at St Andrews - earlier pointed out, it is also recognized that it is the intolerance of the philosophical social reformer. It is to Hegel and to those directly influenced by him, believed Ritchie, that his generation owed a better understanding of Plato. Hegel has occasionally been reproached for inteq)reting the Greek philosophers in the light of his own system, but «in doing so Hegel was only restoring to them what was their own»39 . Barker's earlier study on the history of political thought in England is revealing of the rationale behind the late Victorian reappraisal of Plato. The idealist school broke with the undisguised individualism of utilitarianism and its psychological associationism. In Benthamian materialistic society idealists saw a collection of individuals, each having his own determinate desires and goals. The aims of society were shown to be a product of the mechanistic compromises between individuals, and the public good just a sum total of private goods 40 . Social philosophy, according to Barker, required new premises that would address the needs of political life: 38 E. BARKER, Greek Political Theory. Plato and his Predecessors, London and New York 1918, p. 456. 39 D.G. RITCHIE, Plato, Edinburgh 1902, p. 195. See also OTTo APELT's Platonische Aufsiitze, Leipzig 1912, that treats Platonic ethics from a Kantian point of view because Plato, in Apelt's judgment, was a representative of the same Idealism which was later to be found in Kant. 40 See J. BENTHAM, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed.].H. BURNS and H.L.A. HART, London 1970, chap. I, sect. 4. The community is called «a fictitious body>>, «a sum of the interests of the several members who compose it».

VIII 82 The vital relation between the life of the individual and the life of the community, which alone gives the individual worth and significance, because it alone gives him the power of full moral development; the dependence of the individual, for all his rights and for all his liberty, on his membership of the community; the correlative duty of the community to guarantee to the individual all his rights ... - these were the premises of the new philosophy.

That philosophy would embrace the tenets of social progress, without blindly worshipping individual liberty that was destructive of the «real» liberty of the vast majority. It places emphasis on the moral well-being and improvement of the entire community. The new philosophy required a revolution of ideas, but after all «the revolution is only a restoration; and what is restored is simply the Republic of Plato»4 1. Late Victorian Platonism was to a certain degree an expression of the revolt against hedonistic utilitarianism in ethics and laissezfaire in politics. It was also, to some extent, a reaction against contemporary Spencerian Liberalism, the advocacy of the «freedom of . the individual versus the power of the State». The major philosophical tool utilized to combat libertarian tenets and principles was German idealism (mostly Kant and Hegel) and classical Greek thought (especially Aristotle and Plato) 42 . Intellectual historians have largely commented on the parallel social situation between the Athenians and Victorians in order to

41 E. BARKER, Political Thought in England. From Herbert Spencer to the Present Day, London 1915, p. 11. 42 AsP. NICHOLSON observes the British Idealists were «part of a wider tradition which turns back to Plato. It [their complex of ideas] is distinct from other traditions of political thought. Moreover, it is sharply opposed to those, for instance the social contract and natural rights traditions, which premise the existence of an individual in isolation from Societ}'>>, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists, Selected Studies, Cambridge 1990, p. 3.

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understand why the latter turned to Greece, as a way of articulating a reflective self-image or in their quest for normative, edifying prescriptions. According to Young, late Victorians found themselves at home with Greek minds: «In its many-sided curiosity and competence, its self-confidence and alertness, this Late Mid-Victorian culture is Greek. In its blend of intellectual adventure and moral conservation, it is really Athenian»43 . Joseph Baker likewise asks his readers to recognize «the real parallel» between nineteenth-century England and fifth-century Athens. First of all, they were both maritime empires and leading commercial states that preserved the tradition of the «cultivated gentlemen of leisure»44 • On the intellectual and moral level, Athenians were also facing the conflict between aristocratic tradition and middle-class democracy, science and religion. Old traditions and social conventions were confronted with the radical assault of sophistic relativism and the philosophical march of Reason. The idea of a parallel intellectual and political condition was not only an interpretative device deployed by the historian of classical reception: it is also manifest in primary sources such as Thomas Hill Green's Lectures on Moral and Political Philosophy. In a lecture delivered in 1867 Green talked about three contemporary philosophical schools that trace their origins in classical Greece. The first school taught the inseparableness of morals and theology (Butler's school); the second is called «the school based on materialism, i.e. the utilitarians from Protagoras and the Cyrenaics to Hobbes and Bentham». Materialists understand knowledge, sensation and thought as a function of the brain. The «good» is reduced to bodily pleasure, hence the interests of people are naturally opposed and political society is viable only if a contract is stipulated (i.e. if two wills or more acci-

43 Quoted in JOSEPH E. BAKER, Our New Hellenic Renaissance, in The Reinterpretation a/Victorian Literature, ed. J.E. BAKER, Princeton 1950, p. 219. 44 BAKER, Our New Hellenic Renaissance, pp. 219-220. See also TURNER, The Greek Heritage, pp. 441-442.

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dentally coincide) 45 • In utilitarianism, morality and contract theory · converge - the contract functioning as a vehicle for individual pleasure. The third is the school of Idealism, which «asserts the freedom of the will and immortality». Thus, according to Green, there exist two great divisions: «One starts from materialism and ends in a contract and a state machine. Aristotle and Plato are agreed against the utilitarianism of the Sophists which was much the same as that of Hobbes and Bentham. Plato's Republic is a refutation of the contract theory»46 . In other words, the contractual view of society since the Greek sophists rested on a presumed tension between the individual and the state and could lead to the disintegration of the latter. Plato's political philosophy upset sophistic relativism and individualist contractarianism, and restored a sense of community based on cohesion, benevolence and the piritual substance of the continuing community. Modern idealists envisaged a society founded on similar principles and Plato's philosophy was understandably considered the greatest ally from the past. What was idealism about? 47 Idealist philosophy was not simply committed to an attack on atomistic individualism and the political 45 The second School is critically exposed in }OHN WATSON, Hedonistic Theories, /rom Aristippus to Spencer, Glasgow 1895. The philosopher Plato, Watson emphatically pointed out (p. 48), did not succumb to the fallacious and inconsistent principles of the hedonists and utilitarians, and consequently never divorced the two questions: «0) What is the highest good of the individual? (2) What is the highest good of the state?». 46 T.H. GREEN, Collected Works, ed. P. NICHOLSON, Bristol1997, vol. V, pp.

109-110. 47 There is no full study on Plato and British Idealism. The appropriation of Plato by the German Idealists is explored by }EAN-Lours VIELLARD-BARON, Platon et l'idealisme allemand (1770-1830), Paris 1979. The best study on the British Idealists is that of P. NICHOLSON, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists, quoted above (n. 42). To get a general idea of British Idealism and its critical connection to German Idealism and Hegelianism, the following sources are very useful: J.A. SALOMAA, Idealismus und Realismus in der englischen Philosophie der Gegenwart, Helsinki 1929; GUSTAV SPILLER, The Ethical

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philosophy of utilitarianism. It went back critically to the roots of philosophical reasoning and core epistemological questions, reclaiming the priority of the faculties of mental perception. Etymologically, the word comes from the Greek idea which primarily refers to a mental image, an object perceived by the mind. The idealists invoked an entire tradition in philosophy, usually traced back to Plato, which considers mind or spirit as the most important element in reality and the material world as derived from it. Such philosophical idealism was systematically developed by Hegel, who interpreted the entire process of human history in terms of the progress of Absolute Mind towards self-realization. The end of morality, as discerned from within moral consciousness, is the realization of the self as a whole. The individual is consequently placed not merely in a social, but in a metaphysical context. The libertarian definition of freedom negatively as the absence of restrictions, or as «doing what one desires», is refuted inasmuch as it takes the choices of the individual as the basis from which freedom must begin 48 . Such an understanding of liberty is

Movement in Britain: A Documentary' History, London 1934; TD. WELDON, States and Morals, London 1946; ADAM ULAM, The Philosophical Foundations of English Socialism, Cambridge MA 1951; JEAN PuCELLE, J;idealisme en Angleterre de Coleridge d Bradley, Neuchatel1955; AJM, MILNE, The Social Philosophy of English Idealism, Lo11don 1962; S. COLLINI, Sociology and Idealism in Britain: 1880-1920, «Archives europeennes de sociologie» 19, 1978, pp, 3-50; JAMES BRADLEY, Hegel in Britain: A Brief History of British Commentary and Attitudes, «The Heythrop Journal» 20, 1979, pp. 1-24, 163-182; PETER RoBBINS, The British Hegelians: 1875-1925, New York 1982; A. VINCENT and R. PLANT,

Philosophy, Politics and Citizenship: the Life and Thought of the British Idealists, Oxford 1984; NOEL O'SULLIVAN, The Problem of Political Obligation, London 1986; see also KIRK WILLIS, The Introduction and Critical Reception of Hegelian Thought in Britain, 1830-1900, «Victorian Studies» 32, 1988, pp. 85-111; S, OTTER, British Idealism and Social Explanation: A Study in Late Victorian Thought, Oxford 1996. 48 More on the implications of negative liberty in ISAIAH BERLIN, Two Concepts a/Liberty, Oxford 1958.

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considered problematic because it considers individual choice in isolation from everything else49 • Thus being the outcome of arbitrary circumstances, individual choice cannot be genuinely free. The attack on the empiricist understanding of politics is profound, and the idealist philosopher urges his disciples to transcend explanations that rest merely on contingent (hence arbitrary) material circumstances. Politics in Hegel's «metaphysical» view is connected with the articulation of the mind's capacities. His conception of the role of the state primarily involves overcoming the fragmentation of society and, while allowing free space to achieve selfrealization, seeks to lift the individual out from his private pursuits. On another level, the modern state, when comprehended philosophically, could be seen as the highest articulation of Spirit, or God in the contemporary world5°. Hegel's «discovery» was brought before the British academia primarily by the Scottish James Hutchison Stirling (1820-1909) who called it The Secret of Hegel (1865). At the time Stirlings's work was regarded among the most scholarly and valuable contributions to the elucidation of the depths of Hegelian doctrines, but for us its importance lies in its achievement in introducing in Oxford and the major Scottish universities the critical study of the philosopher-5 1.

49 According to Green, «freedom, rightly understood, is the greatest of blessings; ... We do not mean merely freedom from restraint and compulsion ... [W]e mean a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying, and that, too, something which we do or enjoy in common with others», quoted in PETER NICHOLSON, The Reception and Early Reputation of Mill's Political Thought, in The Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. ]OHN SKORUPSKI, Cambridge 1998, p. 485. 50 See RAYMOND PLANT, Hegel, London 1973, pp. 97-123; and RoBERT B. PIPPIN, Hegel's Idealism. The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness, Cambridge 1989. 51 J.H. STIRLING, The Secret of Hegel, being the Hegelian System in Origin, Principle, Form, and Matter, 2 vols., London 1865. Of the same author see also Text-Book to Kant, London 1881. «The secret of Hegel», he wrote in his Pre/ace,

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According to Muirhead, Stirling «has the merit of being the first clearly to perceive that there was nothing really constructive to be looked for from British philosophy, until it had put itself to school in the German idealist movement»52 . In his «Preface» Stirling stated that Hegel's philosophy was urgently required in Britain as an antidote to the theological scepticism of Strauss and Colenso as well as to counteract the materialistic interpretation of history in such writers as Buckle. Of course, it needs to be remembered that in Oxford scholars like Caird, Green and Jowett were already familiar with Hegelian idealism. They were all well-read in Kant and Hegel and initiated the teaching of historical surveys of philosophy. Reportedly, Green advanced the study of Hegel in Oxford at the urging of Jowett who had discovered the German idealist movement in the 1840s and Hegel in particular and yet published nothing about him53 . The introduction of post-Kantian idealism in Britain was also eased by James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864), sometime Professor of Civil History in the University of Edinburgh and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of St Andrews54 . Ferrier sought might be indicated briefly thus: «Hegel made explicit the concrete universal that was implicit in Kant». On Stirling, see MuiRHEAD, Platonic Tradition, pp. 164171, and G.D. STORMER, Hegel and the secret of James Hutchison Stirling, «Idealistic Studies» 7, 1979, pp. 33-54. 52 MUIRHEAD, Platonic Tradition, p. 164. 53 The reception of Hegel in Britain is admirably examined by JAMES BRADLEY, Hegel in Britain: A Brief History of British Commentary and Attitudes (I) and (II) and by K. WILLIS, The Introduction and Critical Reception of Hegelian Thought in Britain (see note 47 above). On Jowett's influence in introducing Hegelian thought in Oxford, but also on his progressive disenchantment with Hegelianism, see PETER ROBBINS, The British Hegelians 1875-1925, New York and London 1982, chap. 5, pp. 42-46, and GEOFFREY FABER, Jowett. A Portrait with Background, London 1957, pp. 180-183. 54 His major work was the Institutes of Metaphysics, Edinburgh 1856. See E.S. HALDANE, James Frederick Ferrier [1899], with a new Introduction and a complete list of «Works by Ferrier>> by John Haldane, Bristol1991. J.D. MORELL

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to counteract the sceptical challenges of Hume by redefining the structure of cognition. He thus introduced aprioristic reasoning about absolute necessities, especially into his lengthy analysis of Greek philosophy55 . At about the same time there appeared in English the Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie of Johann Eduard Erdmann (1805-1892), a typical Hegelian Professor of the University of Halle whom Jowett - as recorded by his biographer, Faber- visited in Dresden in the summer of 1844. The first volume dealt with ancient and mediaeval philosophy thoroughly in the spirit of idealism56 . (By a strange coincidence Erdmann's Grundriss was published simultaneously with Grote's Plato, but they were, not surprisingly, two completely estranged works as if they were separated by a chronological abyss). A short history of ideas in the light of Hegelianism was also provided by the philosopher and theologian Albert Schwegler (1819-1857), whose Geschichte der Philosophie was again translated by the persevering Stirling57 • A distinguished figure of the first generation of British idealists was the Scottish Edward Caird (1835-1908), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University between 1866-93, and afterwards Master of Balliol in succession to Jowett (1893-1907). Caird's work was partly a reaction to the mechanistic view of society and the associationist philosophy of Alexander Bain (1818-1903). The problem of modern philosophy, Caird argued in 1881, arises was also one of the first to recognize Hegel's importance in his Historical and

Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy in Europe in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., London 1846-1847; so did also fREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, London 1862, «Preface». 55 See Philosophical Works of the late James Frederick Ferrier, ed. ALEXANDER GRANT and E.L. LUSHINGTON, Edinburgh 1875, 3 vols. (vol. II Lectures on

Greek Philosophy). 56 J.E. ERDMANN, A History of Philosophy, trans. W.S. Hough, 3 vols., London and New York 1893, first ed. 1865. 57 A. SCHWEGLER, Geschichte der Philosophie im Umriss, Stuttgart 1848; translated by ].H. STIRLING as Handbook of the History of Philosophy, Edinburgh 1867.

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out of the broken harmony of a spiritual life, the different elements or factors of which seem to be set in irreconcilable opposition to each other; in which, for example, the religious consciousness, the consciousness of the infinite, is at war with the secular consciousness, the consciousness of the finite; or, again, the consciousness of the self with the consciousness of the external world.

This dualism or inner discord, inextricably associated with moral and political questions, was comparable in Caird's mind to a crisis in fourth-century ancient Greece. Plato and Aristotle were, like the moderns, confronted with the consequences of a widespread relativism and sought to «build up again in the soul of the philosopher the falling edifice of Greek civilization, to restore its religious and political life by going back to the ideal principle on which it rested»58 . Plato, in particular, tried to reconcile form and matter, idea and reality - which in the first instance looked antithetical59 . But, according to Caird, the limitations of a Greek «national» religion and the early stage in the evolution of thought and morality furnished solutions that do not apply at present times. The task of modern philosophy is to discover a point of view from which the conflict between freedom and authority in the moral life (admitting the force of the opposing claims of the consciousness of the object and the consciousness of the subject) may be seen to be two distin-

58 E. CAIRO, The Prohlem of Philosophy at the Present Time: an Introductory Address Delivered to the Philosophical Society of the University of Edinburgh, Glasgow 1881, pp. 9, 28. Similarly Muirhead believed that Plato had to face sophistic ethical and cognitive relativism, «a movement of thought which seemed to him to resolve what he held to be the great realities of truth and justice into accidental impressions of individual minds». See Rule and End in Morals, Oxford and London 1932, p. 23. 59 This explains why, Caird argued in his review of Grote's Plato, «a mind that severs matter and form ... so decidedly as Mr. Grote, can scarce represent the thought of Plato fairly», in Grote and the other Companions of Sokrates, «North British Review» 43, 1865, p. 352.

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guishable elements in an indissoluble whole of thought and experience. This conflict between the growing sense of individual freedom and the idealist claim of a unitary society would provide the framework for dealing with the fundamental problems of political philosophy. In Germany political thought was largely dominated by the conception of the supremacy of the national state over the claims of individual liberty, whereas in England for a long period throughout the nineteenth century the focus was on individualism, if we consider Mill's On Liberty and Spencer's Man versus the State60 • Philosophical Idealism was expected to unite the elements of truth that existed in each of these rival understandings. For Caird, the key to ethical life was to be found in taking part in an organized community, in the social community of experience in which self-consciousness can only be reached. Freedom and association, Caird argued, are not antithetical but interdependent actualities. Separated from each other they lose all their meaning. Of course «social unity is valuable in proportion as it leads to, or rests on, a higher form of individual freedom ... [S]ome kind of unity to limit individualism is the first requirement of human life, but that being granted, every step in advance consists in this, that the unity should be secured with less and less sacrifice of individual energy>>61 . It is worth observing that Caird was not inclined to exaggerate the ethical value of the State, like Hegel, but he believed, in Kantian terms, that there exists a higher moral unity which can lead to a kind of emancipation of the individual from the

60 In his First Principles, London 1862, ch. 10, sect. 85, SPENCER advocated an organic view of society, but he also believed that the latter is simply an aggregate of individuals. See also Social Statics, or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of them Developed, London 1851. Spencer argued that human nature was just «the aggregate of men's instincts and sentiments». 61 E. CAIRD, The Moral Aspect of the Economical Problem. Presidential Address to the Ethical Society, London 1888, pp. 12-13.

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state62 . The political philosopher is thus bound to discover ways to overcome and ultimately reconcile extremes, having in mind that the end of society is to facilitate the utmost development of individual capacity while promoting the common good through the tie of interdependence and connection of all individuals. The moral and metaphysical philosophy of Caird is a reflective expansion and modification of central Hegelian and Kantian ideas which drew a lot from the so-called Platonic tradition. Like other idealists Caird was also concerned with the evolution of thought and culture. In his account of the evolution of religious conceptions (such as the idea of the Good, the soul and God's relation to humanity) towards reflective theology, he argued that the Idea of Good in Plato could not be conceived «except as an absolute self-consciousness, a creative mind, whose only object is a universe which is the manifestation of itself». Plato, by expanding the idea of a realm of morality to the entire universe, had become «the founder of speculative theology». Under this light, Plato appears to have been the Greek philosopher who had provided, in the scheme of theological evolution, the main intellectual categories for the Christian religion and the general religious consciousness of the West. Plato was «the philosopher to whom all our theology may be traced back, and to whom it owes most»63. Green, Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) and Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923), are known mostly as political thinkers who exercised a profound influence on the ideological currents in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. But heavy as their debt was to Kant and Hegel, they manifested unwavering commitment to the moral and political philosophy of Plato.

62

E. CAIRD, The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Glasgow 1889, vol.

II, p. 376. 63 E. CAIRD, The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, 2 vols., Glasgow 1904, vol. I, pp. 171-2,58.

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Green, fellow and tutor at Balliol, and later Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy, developed a theory of «eternal consciousness» which was radically Hegelian, and also opposed hedonistic conceptions of the good. Green believed that humans are inclined to selfrealization, the «perfection of human character» constituting the moral goal64 • The impulse towards coherence or completion is characteristic of idealist metaphysics and epistemology. Self-satisfaction, which essentially requires the development of human capacities within a coherent whole, is opposed to mechanistic individualism, thereby associating satisfaction with the promotion of the common good within a social context. Individual moral and civic responsibilities were determined by finding «the duties of one's station»65 . Accordingly, no rights could be ascribed to persons apart from life in society. A right is a power contributory to the common wellbeing, and as such the individualist argument in favour of a natural «right against society», a right to act without reference to the needs or good of society, is a contradiction in terms. To be sure it was because «Plato and Aristotle conceived the life of the :n:6A.L~ so clearly as the teA.o~ of the individual ... that they laid the foundation for all true theory of 'rights'»66 . The argument advanced in modern times, Green observed, on behalf of the individual against the state is alien to the Greek philosopher's way of thinking, who properly conceived of a citizen (:rtOALtl]~) as a member of society (xmvwv(a), thus having correlative duties and rights which the state imposes and confers. Of course Green never went so far as to accept the Hegelian argument that the state is a realization of freedom. But he pleaded for a more positive role for the state, especially in education, which he saw as the tool of moral and social improvement.

64 GREEN, Prolegomena to Ethics [1883], 5'h ed., Oxford 1906, p. 293. Prolegomena, sect. 183. 66 GREEN, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1895] sect. 38, 99, 143, in Collected Works, vol. II, p. 416. 65

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Bradley's Ethical Studies (1876) echoes to some extent Plato's Republic and most clearly the principle ta eautou prattein (doing one's duty), inasmuch as morality is held to be coextensive with self-realization (realization of all human capacity). Bradley's opposition to abstract individualism is Platonic in character and rests on the same assumptions. The utilitarian individualist model of the human person, he claimed, fails to account for the essential social dimension in human personality. My Station and Its Duties reflects perfect acceptance of the social nature of moralityb7 . Bradley's constructive ethic, in opposition to the atomistic utilitarian view of the «self», includes social ideals and any contradictions therein are surmounted by religious consciousness or the idea of the union of human and divine. Thus to reach self-realization individuals must perform their duty in social life by fulfilling the demands of the various stations that they may have. Bosanquet studied at Balliol College, where he fell under the influence of idealist philosophy, mainly through the work of Edward Caird and Green. His philosophical contribution, like his mentors, was inspired largely by a reaction to the earlier empiricist and associationist views of Bentham, Bain and Mill, as well to the scientific secularism of Spencer. Bosanquet had no hesitation in acknowledging that many of his ideas could be found in Hegel, Kant and Rousseau, but the most important influence on his political philosophy he claimed to be that of Plato68 . Central in his philosophy is

67 On the philosophy of Bradley see inter alia, RUDOLF METZ, Die Philosophischen Stromungen der Gegenwart in Grossbritannien, Leipzig 1935; R. WOLLHEIM, F.H. Bradley, Harmondsworth 1969; A. MANSER and G. STOCK (ed.), The Philosophy o/FH. Bradley, Oxford 1984; P. MAcEWEN, ed. Ethics, Metaphysics and Religion in the Thought ofFH. Bradley, New York 1996;}AMES BRADLEY (ed.), Philosophy a/ter FH. Bradley. A Collection of Essays, London 1996, which contains useful bibliography. See also the introductory essay with bibliographical guide of CAROL A. KEENE, in The Collected Works of FH. Bradley, 12 vols., ed. W.J. MANDER and C.A. KEENE, Bristol1999. 68 As is known BOSANQUET published A Companion to Plato's Republic for English Readers, New York and London 1895.

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the claim that social relations and institutions could be best understood at the level of human consciousness instead of material phenomena. This metaphysical idealism pervades his Philosophical Theory of the State (1899) where he abandoned central assumptions of the liberal tradition - particularly those that reflect a commitment to individualism. For Bosanquet, Plato and Aristotle were the progenitors of political idealism: The fundamental idea of Greek political philosophy, as we find it in Plato and Aristotle, is that the human mind can only attain its full and proper life in a community of minds, or more strictly in a community pervaded by a single mind, uttering itself consistently though differently in the life and action of every member of the community.

This conception is expressed by both philosophers in such phrases as the «State is natural», or «the State is prior to the individual». The Platonic commonwealth utilized this idea thoroughly in a way that convinced Bosanquet that «there is no sound political philosophy

which is not an embodiment of Plato's conception»69 • In rejecting the contractual theory of the state, Bosanquet defended the thesis that authority is an expression of the «real» or «general will», and as such is grounded on the natural development of human life. The idealist philosopher saw a close relation between the general will and the «common good», which is the ground of political society70 . His account of the common good and the general will was the basis of his political thought. «The General Will seems to be, in the last resort, the ineradicable impulse of an intelligent being to a good extending beyond itself». Bosanquet's view of moral 69 B. BOSANQUET, The Philosophical Theory of the State and Related Essays, ed. G.F. GAus and W. SWEET, Indiana 2001, p. 50 (emphasis added). 70 B. BOSANQUET, Lectures on the Principles a/Political Obligation, sect. 109; The Reality of the General Will, «International Journal of Ethics» 4, 1893-1894. See W. SWEET, Bernard Bosanquet and the Development of Rousseau's Idea of the General Will, «L'homme et la nature- Man and Nature» 10, 1991, pp. 179-197.

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development is alike a process by which persons attempt to realize in their lives what is demanded by the general will. Self-realization involves movement towards coherence in just the same way as the society is itself moving towards coherence and consistency. In this argumentation, the influence of Rousseau and Hegel is profound. But Rousseau, it should be remembered, as Bosanquet reminds us, had identified the real or rational will with the state, following the principles of Plato and Aristotle71 . Most importantly, Bosanquet saw in Hegel's Philosophy of Right a convincing account of the modern state as an organism or a whole of parts united around a shared understanding of the good72 . Like Hegel, he maintained that the state could be best understood as an ethical idea existing at the level of consciousness rather than just material reality73 . The state is a collective moral entity; and it «includes the entire hierarchy of institutions by which life is determined, from the family to the trade, and from the trade to the Church and the University». The state is not a number of persons, but it is, «as Plato has taught us, the conception by the guidance of which every living member of the commonwealth is enabled to perform his function» 74 . The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 156. B. BOSANQUET, Hegel's Theory of the Political Organism, «Mind» n.s. 7, 1898, pp. 1-14. 73 Hegel's «analysis of rhe modern State as Mind Objective» is «a magnified edition, so to speak, of Plato's Republic», The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 223. The most comprehensive list of Bosanquet's works can be found in P.P. NICHOLSON, A Bibliography of the Writings of Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923), «Idealistic Studies>> 8, 1978, pp. 261-280. Secondary bibliography is immense and cannot be cited here. 74 The Philosophical Theory of the State, pp. 156-157 (emphasis added). See also Bosanquet's Plato's Conception of the Good Li/e, «New World» 2, 1893, esp. p. 628: In Plato, «[t]he facts of morality are exhibited as inherent in the relations of the social whole», etc. Interesting is Bosanquet's attempt to associate his ideas of modern democracy and positive liberty with Plato's view of the position of experts in the Republic. See The Place of Experts in Democracy, «Aristotelian Society Proceedings>> 9, 1908-1909, pp. 61-68. 71

72

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Another celebrated pupil of Green and Jowett at Balliol, and a Plato scholar, was D~vid Ritchie (1853-1903 )75 . Though not an activist, Ritchie was an engaged theoretician and philosophical adversary of Spencerian individualism. His politics may be termed «socialist», an expression of left Hegelianism, in the sense that the social ideal was for him the first principle of ethics and politics. Starting from the recognition that man is a social animal and that the individual must be treated as a member of society, Ritchie maintained that institutions such as property, or the rights of individuals are social and, as their existence is dependent on society, they should be judged by their contribution to the good of the society. His conceptual analysis and method of dealing with political science (blending empirical facts and logic - historical and critical analysis - and rejecting abstract deductive method such as that used by Bentham and Austin) were targeted at revising utilitarianism on idealist terms. This is most clearly shown in his influential Natural Rights (1894) in which he decisively attacked contractarianism and the philosophical assumptions of natural rights theories. The eighteenth-century thinkers, Ritchie wrote, looked on society as made by individuals associating together in order to secure their pre-existing natural rights. We, unless we remain uninfluenced by the more scientific conceptions of human society now possible to us - we see that 'natural rights,' those rights which ought to be recognized, must be judged entirely from the point of view of society. We must return to the method of Plato: in order to know what is really just, we must call up a vision of an ideal society76 .

Rights and duties are a product of a society, and the rights of the individual must be judged from the point of view of society as a

75 For a biographical note with rich bibliography see Nicholson's «Introduction» to the The Collected Works of D. G. Ritchie, 6 vols., Bristol1998. 76 D. RITCHIE, Natural Rights, London 1894, p. 101, emphasis added.

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whole. For the purpose of practical ethics and politics it should be recognized that «personality» is a conception meaningless apart from sociality, and theories such as that of «social contract» and «natural rights», which tend to think it legitimate to judge society from the point of view of the individual are not convincing, albeit convenient. In effect, Ritchie argued, the «Socialistic ideal of the State must still be Plato's ideal», i.e. the state must be regarded as one family in which all work according to their talents and receive according to their needs. Yet, it should be borne in mind that no state can implement any sustainable regulations, either economic or related to sexual behaviour, in violation of the religious and moral codes of a given community. Thus the ideal should never be abstractly placed in opposition to social actuality. As Plato understood, the obligation to morality should rest on certainty of the superiority of justice to injustice through considerations of social well-being and not on vague sanctions of future reward and punishmenr77. In his study of Plato, Ritchie thought it worthwhile to counter the «distorted notion» that Platonism suggests «a vague, mystical manner of thinking, given to irresponsible raptures and contemptuous of the plodding work of intellect». Plato is not a misologist philosopher who turns to «Faith or Inspiration» or divine madness in any sense in which these are antagonistic to «Reason»78 .

III. Plato and the Metaphysical Theory of the State In the early 1930s Muirhead could argue that moral and political speculation had since the time of the Oxford idealists followed a return to the right principles in the light of Plato's sense of Philosophy as the «Vision of the Good», and accordingly tried to go

77

Natural Rights, pp. 262,285. Plato, pp. 74-75.

78 RITCHIE,

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to the root of its social claims. But Muirhead was a voice from the past. In the 1920s the idealist movement was already weakened, and hostile comments towards the so-called metaphysical theory of the state were largely laid down. Idealism argued the philosopher Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864-1929), is the «endeavour to exhibit the fabric of society ... as the incarnation of something very great and glorious indeed, as one expression of that supreme being which some of these thinkers call the spirit and others the Absolute». For Hegel the state is a form of the absolute spirit, a divine idea existing on earth, the practical embodiment of God's movement in the world. The ideal belongs to the objec:tive mind and assumes abstractions, putting aside reflecting reason of the individual as well as appeal to experimental methods. Bernard Bosanquet defined the state by this abstract ideal. Idealism, according to Hobhouse, can be seen as the political reactionary movement that began with Hegel, ; the total subordination of the individual to the state and the organic conception of society in which individuals mattered only insofar as they served the whole; Racialism. Morevoer, Autarky or economic self-sufficiency, which in the atmosphere of Machpolitik was deemed to require loyalty and service in the national interest as well as it entailed imperial expansion. Further, the «leader principle» or the tendency toward a charismatic personal type of command Fuhrerprinzip - would have inevitably been seen as the analogue of the philosopher King of Plato's Politeia. Fascism emerged as the complete antithesis of liberalism. Liberals preached the primacy of the individual, whereas fascists wished to establish the dominance of the community or social group and portrayed the individual as an integral part of an organic whole. The cult of elitism and inegalitarianism, the emphasis on power and authoritarianism, were all pitted against the individualism of the liberal world. Plato, as the progenitor of Idealism and a determined advocate of the Common Good, was now seen as the prophet of fascism. From the early 1930s to the late 1950s Platonic detractors would oppose idealist modes of thinking as preeminently aprioristic, and criticize the fusion of politics and ethics, a conception which, they believed, underlies Plato's writings as much as those of his «successors>>. The idealist tradition was traced back to Plato and held partly responsible for the emergence of the anti-democratic and totalitarian movements in the early twentieth century. Indeed, for the Oxford Idealists Plato was only an authoritative source of philosophical inspiration and an ally from antiquity, which could lend support to their innovative social and political arguments. But when the name of Plato was notoriously advertised in such publications as the Nazi sympathizer Joachim Bannes' Platons Staat und Hitlers Kampf or Platon, Die Philosophie des heroischen Vorbildes (Berlin

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1933 and 1935), or K. Hildebrandt's Platon, der Kampf des Geistes um die Macht (Berlin 1933), and the Republic was viewed, as the «original philosophical charter of Fascism», the platform on which a passionate anti-platonic campaign would take place in the next thirty years was established82 ;

82 As called by W.O. LISSON, quoted in JOHN WILD, Plato's Theory of Man, Chicago 1946, p. 116. n. 82.

IX

The Sophists, Democracy, and Modern Interpretation [1] The student of political theory who ventures to travel through the various interpretations expounded on the sophists over the last two centuries cannot but be puzzled by the diametrical divergence of judgment as to their historical UROH DQG SKLORVRSKLFDO VLJQLÀFDQFH ,Q WKH KLVWRU\ RI  FODVVLFDO VFKRODUVKLS KRZHYHUWKHPRVWLQÁXHQWLDOFULWLFDOLQWHUSUHWDWLRQKDVEHHQWKDWDGYDQFHGE\ *HRUJH*URWHWKH9LFWRULDQ%HQWKDPLWHZKLFKFRQFHLYHVRI WKHVRSKLVWVDV DQLQWHJUDOSDUWLQWKHGHYHORSPHQWRI GHPRFUDWLFSROLWLFDOWKHRU\$KLVWRULDQ of ideas often writes from the standpoint of his own system of values and H[SHULHQFHDQGDQ\SDUWLFXODUDSSURDFKFDQEHPRUHRUOHVVOLQNHGZLWKWKH IDEULFRI FRQWLQJHQFLHVDQGWKHYDULRXVIRUPVRI SKLORVRSKLFDOUHDVRQLQJ,Q WKHDIWHUPDWKRI WKH*UHDW:DU3ODWREHFDPHWKHIRFXVRI LPPHQVHFULWLFLVP LQDVPXFKDVKHDSSHDUHGWRKDYHEHHQWKHHIIHFWLYHSURSKHWRI WRWDOLWDULDQLVP )RU WKH ODWH .DUO 3RSSHU 3ODWR LQ WKH SROLWLFDO VFKHPHV HQYLVDJHG LQ the Republic and the Laws V\VWHPDWLFDOO\ VXERUGLQDWHV WKH FODLPV RI  WKH LQGLYLGXDOWRWKRVHRI WKHVWDWHOHDYLQJQRURRPIRUWKHH[HUFLVHRI LQGLYLGXDO DXWRQRP\13RSSHU·VDSSURDFKLVGLVWLQFWO\UHPLQLVFHQWRI WKHKRVWLOLW\VKRZQ WRZDUGV 3ODWR LQ 9LFWRULDQ %ULWDLQ E\ D FHUWDLQ JURXS RI  OLEHUDO WKLQNHUV DV his political propositions appeared peculiarly averse to democratic ideals – LQGLYLGXDOOLEHUW\LQFOXGHG3ODWR·VUHFXUULQJSDUDOOHOEHWZHHQWKHFRPPXQLW\ DQGWKHLQGLYLGXDOLI HYHUSXWLQWRSUDFWLFHZRXOGQHJDWHWKHRSHUDWLRQRI WKH LQVWLWXWLRQDOPDFKLQHU\RI GHPRFUDF\7KHVRSKLVWVLQFRQWUDVWUHSUHVHQWHG WKHVSLULWHGDGYRFDWHVRI GHPRFUDF\DV\VWHPRI SROLWLFDORUJDQL]DWLRQWKDWGLG QRWVDFULÀFHXQFRQGLWLRQDOO\WKHLQWHUHVWVRI WKHLQGLYLGXDOWRDQ\FROOHFWLYH VFKHPHRI FLYLFDLPV Originally published in Polis  7KLVDUWLFOHKDVEHHQUHVHWIRUWKHSXUSRVHVRI WKLV YROXPH7KHRULJLQDOSDJHQXPEHUVDUHVKRZQLQVTXDUHEUDFNHWVZLWKLQWKHWH[W

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IX 

The Sophists, Democracy, and Modern Interpretation

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