The best government for imperfect people is … imperfect

    

I have enjoyed being a part of this conversation about Ioannis D. Evrigenis’s thoughtful piece, “Why a “Republic” and not a “Democracy?” and I’ve benefitted greatly from Carl Richard and Marco Romani’s responses. I’m grateful to Liberty Fund for making this exchange possible. Perhaps, my gratitude has made me particularly accommodating, because when Evrigenis suggested in his follow up essay that we shift our focus, I was immediately happy to oblige. It helps that I think he is right.

He writes,

As I wrote in my first response, I understand Socrates’s accounts of political regimes in the Republic collectively to imply that kallipolis has not and likely will not ever exist as a political regime. Socrates insists that it is not impossible for it to exist, but he admits that it is practically impossible to meet the conditions for the possibility of it coming into existence. He also says that it doesn’t matter. Kallipolis is an ideal designed to inform our thinking and orient our ambitions. The fact that it cannot be instantiated as a political regime does not diminish its value.

If kallipolis cannot likely exist as a regime, the question for the practical politician becomes “what is the best possible regime to be attempted?” (There are different questions implied for the philosopher, but that’s a matter for another time.) This is where Evrigenis’s suggestion that we refocus on more positive ancient claims regarding democracy comes into play. Given how low democracy sits in the hierarchy of unjust regimes enumerated in the Republic, it seems implausible to claim that it is being recommended as the best possible regime, but I think that is precisely what Plato implies. If any of the other regime types (except tyranny) were perfectly instantiated, they would be better than democracy. But not only is that unlikely, but the imperfect instantiation of any of them is dangerous, so attempting them is imprudent. Taking the words of James Madison not entirely, I hope, in vain, “If men were angels . . .” we could do better than democracy. But we’re not. And we can’t.

Democracy is the best regime when instantiated imperfectly for imperfect human beings. Socrates’s preference for and commitment to Athens is one of the clearest signs of this being Plato’s position. It is not a small thing to be the regime least likely to kill philosophers – even if that regime is like a big horse that is always swatting at them.

What is meant by “democracy” matters. And, in this case, I think Plato means a regime much closer to what we tend to mean by “republic,” i.e., the rule of law, popular sovereignty, and institutions that avoid, as best they can, what Madison calls “faction” in Federalist 10.

Contemporary advocates of American democracy and republicanism often don’t understand each other because they don’t mean the same things by the same words. Regimes that embody the extreme positions they attribute to one another have never and probably will never exist. If we learn to make ourselves understood and we focus on what is politically possible for imperfect people in an imperfect world, there is probably more common ground than many contemporary partisans imagine. We would do well to look for it together.