The Republic of Plato. This is the title of arguably the most authoritative English translation of Plato’s classic work by Allan Bloom (1930-1992) who was a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago. Importantly, he was also a student of Leo Strauss, the German philosopher who developed a strictly textual, even exegetic approach to the reading and examination of what he and his students claimed to be the great books of the tradition of political philosophy. Bloom’s is a literal translation à la Strauss, “a slavish, even if sometimes cumbersome, literalness,” because according to Bloom, “the only true historical objectivity is to understand the ancient authors as they understood themselves.”1
The main Straussian assumption, accepted by Bloom, too, is that the great books of political philosophy are nearly perfect, that is, their writers’ choice of words, even when they might seem contradictory or nonsensical, is never arbitrary. They cannot be arbitrary because the stakes are too high. Firstly, the great writers are usually writing under threat of persecution. So, the argument is that they are instinctually careful with their words to the point of being painstakingly exact. Secondly, the great writers imagine themselves to be in dialogue with each other across the ages. So, the ones building on the tradition almost always (but not always openly due to the risk of persecution) refer to their predecessors. This has been caricatured in Alfred North Whitehead’s statement that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato.” A more romantic portrayal of the great conversation is by one of the great writers himself. Machiavelli, in a letter dated 10 December 1513, describes the matchless joy of entering the “ancient courts of ancient men”:
When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them.2
The reason why great thinkers are in transhistorical dialogue is because they are dealing with -again, a prominent Straussian notion- perennial issues of politics, which, again, leads them to try to write perfectly and never arbitrarily, with a responsibility to speak with the past and towards future generations.
It is the knowledge of this responsibility that leads Bloom to begin his translation with an extended footnote on why the title of Plato’s work is very misleading. The work is called “Republic”, because this is how Cicero translated the Greek politeia (derived from polis, the city in the ancient Greek context) into Latin. With its modern connotations, the title “Republic” becomes even more misleading, because it might bring to mind a very specific form of anti-monarchical government based on equal citizenship. Nevertheless, Bloom says that he cannot change the title because of “the great weight of tradition,” but he also cannot stop himself from suggesting a more clear understanding of what the original politeia means:
The central political concern is the proper organization of a city, and the politeia is that organization. The politeia can largely be identified with the class of citizens who rule, for they impress their way on the city and are the source of the laws. The politeia is, as it were, the soul of the city; the politeia is related to the individuals who compose the city as form is to matter. The best English term for translating it is “regime,” as in “the old regime.” The book which describes the best political life is appropriately entitled “the regime,” the only true or the best regime, just as the book of all books is entitled simply the Bible, the book. Such an approach to the political problem is characteristically Platonic, and an attempt to recover the Greek understanding of human things requires a consideration of the sense in which the politeia is the single most important political fact and the cause of men’s characters and ways of life.3
Reading Plato’s Republic (and therefore, the rest of the tradition of political philosophy) as addressing, among other things, the perennial issue of the regime is tempting. Regime is “the single most important political fact and the cause of men’s characters and ways of life,” as Bloom emphasises and I feel the urge to re-emphasise. Regime is not equal to government or state. Both government and state may come and go without touching people’s characters and both can be silent on the matter of a way of life. And the business of building characters and lifeworlds rests on the recognition of an authority removed from the citizenry. Oxford English Dictionary is mindful of this nuance and its possibly nasty implication as it defines regime as “a government, especially an authoritarian one.”
Let’s not forget that the Straussian agenda is ultimately conservative. Why should a political arrangement aim to affect people’s characters and ways of life? But if you are not on the libertarian or anarchist sides of the progressive argument, you would know that it is difficult to disregard how much of progressive transformation would actually depend on a regime which Bloom underwhelmingly identifies with “a class of citizens who rule.” Therefore, in a sense, the perennial problem of the regime is the perennial problem of authority. Let’s leave it at that, as something to explore further as I keep introducing The Republic of Plato in future posts.
One final mention, though, with respect to the Turkish experience. In Turkish, The Republic of Plato is always translated as Devlet.4 The exact English equivalent for devlet is the state. But devlet in Turkish is more than the state in English as devlet signifies a sense of ancient rule, based on a romantic historiography depicting Turks across the ages establishing stable and responsible states (or at least, state-like structures) across vast geographies from Central Asia to Asia Minor. Devlet also captures Bloom’s meaning of a class of citizens who rule, as something different from the rest of the citizenry. It is a prominent aspect of Turkish political culture to speak of devlet as a near-transcendent referent, something outside our ordinary lives and able to fulfill our wishes - or thwart them irrevocably, depending on where you stand with respect to, well, the regime.
As I keep feeling the urge to talk about the Erdoğan regime and not the Erdoğan government or Erdoğan’s state, I appreciate what politeia entails in the Turkish context, too. Choosing a regime is choosing your rulers and thereby choosing your character and way of life in light of their ruling. The old regime, i.e. the Kemalist one, fits the bill, too. Overall, reading The Republic of Plato while thinking about modern Turkey’s transformations is a fruitful prospect. It would be exciting to do this in the company of a new translation, which I heard is in the making, by
, one of the best living Turkish professors of ancient philosophy whom I got to know thanks to Flu TV, my favourite Turkish-language YouTube channel.The Republic of Plato, second edition, trans. Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 2016, xxv, xxvi.
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, The University of Chicago Press, 1998, 144.
The Republic of Plato, trans. Bloom, 440.
For instance, Platon, Devlet, trans. Sabahattin Eyüboğlu and M. Ali Cimcoz, Türkiye İş Bankası Yayınları.