1 The Philosopher-Kings

The controversy on political virtues and the possibility of teaching them cannot be isolated from the historical context. Pericles’ funeral oration, as recreated by Thucydides, and the story of the myth of Prometheus, which Plato attributes to Protagoras, probably correspond faithfully to the thought of Pericles and Protagoras. I have dealt with them here as an illustration of the democratic spirit, as documents that eloquently express the self-affirmation of Athenian democracy as a political system that is distinct from others, and citizens’ participation in political life as a phenomenon unknown in other Greek and barbarian states. But Athenian democracy went through turbulent times in the second half of the 5th Century, which were of great importance for Plato’s political and anthropological thought; and in our Greek journey, it is Plato who offers a new ideal in which the aristocracy of blood or money is replaced by intellectual aristocracy.

The period of the greatest Athenian political and military hegemony was under Pericles in the mid-5th Century. It lasted until the start of the Peloponnesian War in the year 431. While the Athenian empire was run with extreme cruelty to the subject cities, in the agora of its great capital city there were heated discussions on the nature of power and justice, such as those systematised in the following century by philosophers, in particular Plato and Aristotle. In the years 411 and 404, there were oligarchical coups in Athens, but in both cases, democracy was restored a year later. Athens was finally defeated by Sparta in 404, beginning a long period of hegemony by the latter power and its allies. Socrates was condemned to death in 399, when Plato was twenty-nine years old.

As we have seen, Solon implemented the mechanism of selection by lot for access to certain public offices; at times, combined with other procedures, such as a pre-selection of candidates by the four new tribes in which Athens was divided after the administrative reforms. The system of selection by lot aimed to reduce the power of the dominant families and the procedure came to be used very often in Athenian democracy. However, what made clear sense in establishing the democracy is presented by Plato as an absurd and irrational procedure. Just as no one would consider choosing a doctor to cure the sick or a captain to steer a ship by lot from among those present, much less should this be done with the positions of administrative and political responsibility which are decisive for the life of the community. Selection by lot is criticised based on the doctrine of skills and the defence of expert knowledge, as well as the aim of sophists to teach political qualities.

In his version of the Prometheus myth, Protagoras attributes to Zeus himself the distribution between all men of moral sensitivity and the sense of justice, which legitimise their participation in the city’s democratic life. Based on comparison with the knowledge of skills, Socrates denies the possibility of teaching political qualities without a prior determination of the things that a politician must really know and the tasks that he has to carry out. In the eponymous dialogue, Protagoras begins by describing his activity as that of teaching areté or political excellence; and Socrates begins by questioning whether virtue can be taught. Socrates ends up claiming not only that virtue requires a true and precise knowledge of the objects it refers to, but that it actually consists of this knowledge. This is something the sophist cannot accept. But what interests us here is not to unravel the real meaning of Socratic intellectualism—which is far from easy—but to examine the Greek varieties of the ideal, the forms of areté and conscience and the experience of these excellences.

The Platonic doctrine of knowledge has a great relevance for the fabulous construction of the ideal state and the parallel determination of the structure of human subjectivity. It is from this that the conception of philosophical education and the new aristocratic model of excellence and intellectual self-consciousness arises. Familiarity with certain phases of culture should not make us forget their historical nature, their novelty and the need for self-affirmation and making one’s way forward.

The Platonic investigation into the ideal state begins with an investigation into the nature of justice. A number of possibilities are examined, most of them undoubtedly proffered in discussions in Athens and mentioned by previous authors: return what is due, serve friends and harm enemies, what is best for the strongest, respect for the laws, not harming anyone … A parallelism is established between the different groups and the potential of the individual; and the structure of a well-ordered state is determined according to the principle of division of labour. By way of reasoning and detailed discussions which are not worth pursuing here, it is agreed that a well-ordered state is one that will be organised into three classes: the producers, auxiliary rulers and ruling guardians. A parallelism is established with three powers relating to the mind: appetitive, irascible and rational.

What would later be called the four cardinal virtues fit beautifully both into the state and the individual. Temperance is the virtue which tempers the desires of the producers and appetites of the soul: courage must govern the conduct of the auxiliaries and the irascible mind; practical wisdom guides the actions of the rulers and the rational soul. The investigation on the nature of justice has required many pages and a great effort, but the results reached could not be clearer. Both in the city and the individual, justice is the harmonious conjunction of the parts, in which each sticks to his tasks without getting involved in those of the others: justice is ‘doing one’s own work’ (433 b), or in plain language, ‘cobbler, stick to your last’. Perhaps I should also recall the eloquence of General De Gaulle, when the disturbances of 1968 were calming down: il est temps que les enseignants enseignent, que les étudiants étudient, et que les travailleurs travaillent.

The soul of the governors is golden, those of auxiliaries silver, and of the producers bronze or iron, says Plato, with a nod to Hesiod’s myth of the ages. Reproduction takes place within the classes, so it is normal for children to inherit the nature of their parents. However, the classes of the ideal Platonic state are not castes, because in an explicit development of the myth of metals, Plato clearly states that the members of one class may have children who are more apt for life in another. In these cases, we have to act in consequence: assign the children of rulers to production or educate those of the producers carefully for the hard-working life of the philosophical rulers.

As is well-known, Plato dedicates the most beautiful pages to the ideal of philosophical education in all its phases: the general education of the body and spirit (gymnastics and music) of all the guardians, auxiliaries and rulers, and the higher education of those destined to rule the city. Along the way, he offers the marvellous analogies of the cave and the line to distinguish the forms of knowledge, from images to ideas. And he describes the sacrificial life of philosophical rulers, who do not have property or family. They don’t know their children, who are brought up and educated by the state.

What is decisive for us are two things. First, there is a strength and imposing beauty to the three-part structure of the soul and the model of philosophical education. The allegory of the Phaedrus for the three-part soul is unforgettable: the winged chariot drawn by a concupiscent black horse and a game white horse steered by a rational charioteer. The initial education of the rulers would inspire the mediaeval division into seven liberal arts in the Trivium (grammar, dialectic and rhetoric) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music), while higher education would reflect the problems of epistemology and the great philosopher’s theory of ideas. If humility is commitment and pride is confidence and the strength arising from it, as Shawn Tucker wishes, it has to be said that Platonic conscience of intellectual and moral excellence comes from humility and devotion to truth and ideas. This awareness of the excellence of human nature involves the wish to be worthy of it.

Moreover, there is the question regarding those who receive philosophical education. We can leave to one side the peculiar nature of personal life assigned to the rulers. This educational ideal involves, first, comprehensive education and training (physical and intellectual); and then, truly philosophical education, with a journey through the forms of knowledge: imagination, belief, reasoning and intellect. The recourse to classical models has recognised in a number of periods how attractive this ideal is. However, in the Platonic project, higher education is not an educational ideal that can be generalised. Despite the room allowed for movement between classes, Plato insists again and again that what is important in human beings is always the form of being of one of the three social classes and one of the three parts of the soul. Having noted that proviso, individuals are by nature producers, auxiliaries or select souls who can be educated philosophically: ‘someone who is by nature a cobbler to practice cobblery and nothing else, for the carpenter to practice carpentry, and the same for the others’ (443 c). Not everyone can aspire to knowledge or is made to govern. It is a matter of the aristocracy of spirit.

2 Greatness of Soul

In his writings on morals, Aristotle says that there is agreement in terms of the name of the supreme good, a full or happy life (εὐδαιμονία), but not as to its nature. Normal people understand happiness to be a visible and tangible reality—pleasure, wealth, honour—and the same person tends to change opinion as his luck changes. For someone sick, it is health; for the poor, it is wealth. Men of the world tend to admire people who say grand and sophisticated things and value education or culture above all. Finally, the Platonists talk about good in itself, the reason why the good things that surround us are good (Nicomachean Ethics, 1095a 16–29).

Aristotle determines the different possibilities for understanding the supreme good based on the different forms of life lived by different types of people: the voluptuous life, political life and theoretical life. Most men live a life of enjoyment and value pleasure over all things, but this form of life does not distinguish them in anything from brutes. Political life pursues honours as the greatest of goods, but the philosopher objects to this on two counts:

1. 1.One can be refused honours, like Achilles, and we look for something more personal which cannot be taken from us.
2. 2.Those who seek honours appear in reality to seek the confirmation of their worth and want to be judged by virtuous men, which shows that they value virtue or excellence above honours.

Before moving on to theoretical life, Aristotle mentions a fourth possibility, life dedicated to profit, which he does not consider further, as he understands that the goal it seeks, which is wealth, cannot be conceived as a good in itself, but always as a means to achieve other goods.

As Dirlmeier shows in his commentary, the doctrine of the three forms of life dates back to Ancient Greek concepts and appears in Solon and Bacchylides. In the Republic, Plato deduces them from the parts of the soul:

1. 1.The appetitive part corresponds to the life of the lover of profit, who pursues pleasure and wealth.
2. 2.The spirited part is that of the ambitious man, who pursues honours.
3. 3.The rational part is that of the philosophical life, whose goal is knowledge. (580ff)

Some commentators grant a broad scope to this reflection on the possibilities for training and life, which would include the class of modest craftsmen and peasants, whose daily work is focused on labour. However, the truth is that the educational proposals of Plato and Aristotle make sense above all in Athens for free and well-off families and individuals. Young people of this class have before them various options and models for life which the philosophers simplify and schematise in these three categories—pleasure, politics and study—to highlight their own ideal.

Aristotle’s moral and educational proposal, which culminates in the ideal of magnanimity, a full or happy life, consists of two components: virtuous activity, which is the essential part, and external goods. The moral philosophy of Aristotle, which is part of his political philosophy, consists to a great extent of the deployment of this new philosophical conception of areté, based on the examination and criticism of previous conceptions. Compared with the Platonic theory of virtue as knowledge, Aristotle makes a conclusive distinction between ethical and dianoetic virtues, qualities of character and intelligence, whose depository is the ἦθος or moral character, a form of second nature, which in fact gives its name to the discipline of ethics. The Aristotelian theory of virtue, with its distinction between ethical and intellectual qualities, is the foundation of the broad scope of moral philosophy which calls on the notions of ‘moral character’ and ‘prudential judgement’, even in contemporary thought.

In his conception of happiness, Aristotle also calls on external goods and distinguishes two types:

1. 1.Goods necessary for the actual exercise of virtue, which constitute necessary attributes of happiness, such as friends, wealth, political power, health and all the goods of the body except for beauty.
2. 2.Goods necessary for happiness, without being required by the virtuous activity itself, which form part of the Ancient Greek ideals of happiness: beauty, illustrious ancestors, beautiful and successful children.

It is not necessary to add pleasure to the exercise of virtue, as it is a natural consequence of it. No one would consider someone who did not enjoy the exercise of virtue to be good, says Aristotle.

In terms of its origin, Aristotle wonders whether happiness comes from ourselves or from outside ourselves. For the first possibility, the answers are study, habits and natural disposition; for the second, divine favour and luck. The distinction between the essential part of happiness, which consists of the exercise of virtue, and external goods, allows Aristotle to give a precise response. Although a natural disposition is necessary, as he stresses in many passages, happiness depends on the individual, as the dianoetic virtues are acquired by study and ethic virtues by habit, although they are closely governed by reason. However, to the extent that external goods depend on chance, it has an influence on happiness, which is the reason for the question about how long it lasts and his answer. Can we call a man happy before his death, when the greatest of disgraces can still befall him? Yes, because while the exercise of virtue is essential for happiness, the person who exercises it for a long time and is in the fullness of his life will deserve to be considered happy, although this does not prevent him from no longer being happy if some misfortune befalls him.

At this point we should recall the aristocratic ideal and pride of areté as the warrior virtue, which I have referred to before. With the growing democratisation of the city in the 6th Century, this virtue was under threat. The poets Theognis and Pindar reacted against this threat and insisted on the importance of aristocratic birth. For them, the question is now Race or culture? and whether areté can be taught; although the democratic conception of this did not appear until the sophists. These masters of rhetoric taught that anyone can be trained and acquire areté, which is no longer a warrior virtue, but one of the political qualities. Aristotle plays with the typical uncertainty of his time and the meanings of the term as warrior virtue and moral virtue. Moreover, the distinction between ethical and dianoetic virtues undoubtedly aims to compensate the Socratic intellectualism of virtue as science, but also take it to its ultimate consequences in the field of dianoetic virtues. According to the beautiful idea of Gauthier and Jolif (p. 105), taken from Festuguière, the dianoetic virtues advance in the Socratic doctrine on virtue, while ethical virtues echo the non-theoretic but rather human Socrates, in how he behaved.

It is Werner Jaeger who has highlighted best the connection between the old warrior areté, kalokagathía, and philosophical areté, ‘The great Athenian thinkers bear witness to the aristocratic origin of their philosophy, by holding that areté cannot reach true perfection except in the high-minded man’. The English translation uses the term ‘high-minded’, which is very nice, but what Jaeger says is hochgemut (exceedingly proud), here in a positive sense. He continues as follows: ‘Both Aristotle and Homer justify their belief that high-mindedness is the finest expression of spiritual and moral personality, by basing it on areté as worthy of honour’ (Jaeger 1933-47, 35/12). Thus, in the hymn to areté of his father-in-law Hermias of Atarneus, who braved the torture of the Persians in order not do anything ‘unseemly or contrary to philosophy’, Aristotle connects philosophical areté with that of Homer and the models of Ajax and Achilles. And while Jaeger illustrates the relationship between the ideal of greatness of soul, i.e. the figure of the magnanimity in Book iv of the Nicomachean Ethics, the incarnation of the perfection of the ethical virtues, with the old warrior areté, Gauthier and Jolif do the same for the dianoetic dimension of man: ‘the first step towards the conception of a contemplative wisdom was taken when the democratic revolution abolished birthrights and the professors pretended to teach everyone the art of governing men … This pretension, of course, aroused the indignation of the aristocrats’ (p. 484).

The educational model of Aristotle focused on young and free men, in other words on a small number of his compatriots. They are in the springtime of life and wonder how to organise and direct it. They can dedicate themselves to pleasure, politics or studies. The ideal proposed by Aristotle aims to go beyond the framework in which these possibilities are presented as exclusive alternatives. The ancient heroes were taught, as Phoenix recalls often to Achilles ‘to be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds’ (Jaeger 1933-47, 30/8): speak, let’s say, the prudent words of Odysseus and do the warlike deeds of Achilles. We can also say that for Aristotle the full or happy life in harmony with the interior spirit, eudaimonía, consists of ‘carrying out actions and questioning the cosmos’, i.e. exercising the virtues: practical intelligence (phrónesis), which directs in turn the activity of the character, and theoretical intelligence (sofía), the incarnation of the speculative and philosophical destiny of man, whose greatest manifestation is the contemplation of God.

But this philosophical ideal, perhaps conceived for a specific audience of young people, which competes with others such as the sophist ideal of Protagoras and Gorgias or the humanist ideal of Isocrates, does not appear strange today; in fact, it offers a universal and democratic appeal. The distinctions between character and intellect, between practical and theoretical life, can be recognised as our own, and as core elements around which education and its pretention to universality can be articulated, above gender, class and race. There is nothing further from aristocratic magnanimity than ordinary overbearing hubris, the attitude of superiority and disdain, which Tucker attributes to it. Moral virtues are at the service of valuable conduct in each sphere of activity, and the magnanimous man aspires to all of them, above all and decisively; although the thirst for honour of the ancient heroes remains unquenched. As we know, Tucker also offers a nice proposal of conceiving humility as a commitment and pride as confidence. In these terms, the humility of the magnanimous man is his commitment to value and his pride is confidence in his own excellence.

However, with respect to democratic equality, the educational models of Plato and Aristotle are based on the axiological difference between individuals (die aristokratische Anschauung des Plato und Aristotle von der Verschiedenwertigkeit der Menschen, Jaeger 1933-47: 146/104). This difference is particularly crude in the distinction established by Aristotle between free humans and slaves by nature (Pol. ii, 5). In the thought of Plato, this inequality is tempered by the myth of metals, and in the thought of Aristotle by the theory of virtue as habit which is developed and strengthened based on private actions. But this aristocracy of virtue is also the aristocracy of lineage, because it is based quite naturally on superiority, both innate and of breeding. You have to be born with sight to judge correctly and choose the real good, says Aristotle, and the person whom nature has provided generously with it is well endowed in this respect, because ‘it is what is greatest and most noble, and what we cannot get or learn from another, but must have just such as it was when given us at birth’ (1114 b10–11). Through the pertinent roundabout comments, he also states that although the noble by birth and the rich and powerful tend to be considered magnanimous, only the good man is truly worthy of honour. Despite which, ‘he, however, who has both advantages is thought the more worthy of honour’ (1124 a25).

3 Hubris, Outrage and Excess

The notion of proportion and moderation has a great importance in Greek culture. In the case of self-valuation, which lies at the core of pride, moderation is particularly delicate. The lack of moderation, which is excess, leads easily to a proud attitude and character. Greek has an eloquent term for the loss of balance and proportion: ὕβρις. In reality, in its main sense, this term signifies the deliberate and pleasurable provocation of dishonour and shame in others, for which we tend to use outrage. It is the sense attributed to the term by Aristotle in his Rhetoric (ii, 2, 1378 b22–27; ‘wanton violence, arising from the pride of strength or from passion, insolence’, is the first meaning in the Liddell-Scott-Jones lexicon). According to N.R.E. Fisher, author of a monumental monograph on Greek húbris, the best way of articulating all its uses, from the archaic to the classical period, is by reference to the meaning made explicit by Aristotle. The simple popular identification of húbris with the insolence of men with respect to the gods is not therefore correct (Fisher 1992, Chapters 1 and 13). According to Fisher, húbris is above all outrage and the abuse by the powerful of the weak, who must implement the democratic rules and processes against the húbris of the aristocrats (húbreos graphé).

According to Fisher, the sense in which direct insolence against the gods is called húbris rather than simply excess, is real, but derivative. He says that in tragedies it is only patent in The Persians by Aeschylus, which is perhaps an overstatement. With respect to his son Xerxes, the ghost of Darius insists that ‘that one who is a mortal should not think arrogant thoughts: outrage has blossomed, and has produced a crop of ruin, from which it is reaping a harvest of universal sorrow’ (verses 820–823). And the chorus in the Eumenides insists that húbris is the daughter of impiety (v 534). There is a nice characterisation in the Hippolytus of Euripides, which appears to be in line with popular wisdom, about the excess of measuring oneself against the gods, ‘It is pride (húbris), nothing else, to try to best the gods’ (verses 474–5).

In fact, the term húbris or outrage also denotes or connotes the contrary of moderation, immoderation, which in many contexts can be translated as foolishness or insolence. You cannot rise into the brazen sky, be a god, cross the pillars of Hercules, navigate to the west of Cadiz. Although it is not its original sense, in the mythological and religious context, húbris leads us to question the nature and place of mortals with respect to the gods. Senselessness and overbearing pride, both with respect to the gods and among men, are called hubris in English and correspond to pride as an act of superiority and disdain. But serene pride, feeling one’s own value, does not have to be excessive. In analysing the notion of virtue, Aristotle calls on moderation and the just boundaries. Balance and moderation preside the ideal of magnanimity, the fullness of virtues of character and intelligence and the use of this scope of the term more inherent to aristocratic excellence: kalokagathía.

4 Pride and Work

The emotion of pride goes with and bolsters the awareness and affirmation of oneself. At times, this emotion simply refers to one’s own self as new or different, but it always conceals some type of positive valuation, which can have different levels or scopes. As we have seen, in Ancient Greece there were different models of individual, ideals of education and training which revolved around the idea of areté: virtue or excellence. This idea was transformed and adopted new forms, but preserves in general the trace and weight of the previous form. Warrior skills, nobility of origin, prosperity, political participation, intelligence and magnanimity are lived with composure and satisfaction. Each new ideal corresponds to historical and political events, but also involves proposals, discoveries and axiological postulates.

However, pride does not necessarily appear linked to greatness received, but can accompany humility. The opposite of pride is not humility, but shame. Humility is humility with respect to something great or powerful; and pride is pride for the public or secret affirmation or recognition of something valuable, of a new greatness. Werner Jaeger classifies as proud humility (stolze Bescheidenheit) the affirmations of the spirit, before Plato and Aristotle, deployed by the poet Archilochus and the philosophers Xenophon and Parmenides. It is humility before the greats, the aristocrats of force, blood or money. But it is pride for the intimate awareness of another greatness: intellectual greatness. Here lies the venerable hierarchy between the goods of the spirit, the goods of the body and external goods. It is an axiological discovery of the greatest magnitude, which has great implications, however much time makes it appear a cliché. It is attributed to Socrates, to traditional wisdom, or, more plausibly, to the god Apollo. What is important is that it was not always there and had competitors, as can be seen from this example, an ancient festive song:

Moreover, Thucydides himself points to a reason for pride to which we have not yet referred: the Athenians were proud of their ancient Athenian ancestry, not like any old Dorians, who had come from God knows where: ‘For this land of ours, in which the same people have never ceased to dwell in an unbroken line of successive generations’ (ii, 36, 2; also, i, 2, 5–6). This new reason illustrates that the possible grounds for the emotion of pride are as varied as the possible reasons for rational action—although that is another story. Human beings may feel proud of an enormous variety of things, provided that they do not have a neutral or negative value for the person who feels them in that way. Another thing is the destination of this valuation, its scope, permanence, transformation or subsequent rejection. The Athenians were proud of being from Athens, while the Aryans who came to the Indus valley felt proud of being well-travelled, not like any old weak Dravidians, camped in the same place from God knows when. However much force it has had in history, with the passing centuries the idea will begin to be accepted, not without pain, that the direct or indirect origin from Homo erectus is not a very reliable value.

Pride, hubris and humility adopt other different forms in Judaeo-Christian religion, which is the other source of our culture, together with Ancient Greece.