“Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.” (Plato)
In this essay I would like to explore how an understanding of ethics and politics in ancient philosophy can help those seeking to bring truth into politics communicate effectively. I write here with a particular concern that the findings of climate science come to enter the field of practical reason and be taken up and acted upon by citizens, legislators, politicians, policy makers, and economic providers. I could have taken Aristotle as my subject, but will instead look at Plato.
Climate change communication (CCC) is an emerging field which purports to narrow and eventually close the gap that has been identified between scientific knowledge with respect to the crisis in the climate system and the public will and motivation to respond and act. Although psychologists in the field of climate change communication have been doing good work in pioneering strategies for improving the effectiveness of communication, their research is overwhelmingly empirical and hence tends to neglect the ethical dimension of CCC.
At the same time, whilst philosophers have been much more attentive to the requirements of ethical communication, there has been a pronounced tendency to focus on the cognitive dimensions of such communication, to the neglect of its affective and social dimensions. These dimensions are at the heart of my work, with its attempt to bridge the gap between theoretical reason (scientific knowledge, facts) and practical reason (ethics and politics) so as to ensure a pathway between truth, will, and motivation. As a result, communication of truth comes to proceed ethically, effectively, and democratically.
I therefore wish to recover and develop the specific insights of Plato, exploring how these may enable climate scientists to communicate the facts of climate change more ethically and effectively. I show how situating communication within an ethical relationship between educator and educated, emphasising at all times the agency, practical reasoning, and prudence of the educated, too, as educators by way of their real life experience, building trust and interrelationship, an art of rhetoric emerges which enables ‘truth tellers’ to communicate both effectively and ethically, creating, sustaining, and enriching the relationship between expertise and democracy. In appropriating the insights of Plato, I address his criticisms of democracy and advance a view which answers his question as to whether democracy is capable of supplying itself with a self-limiting, self-governing principle.
In light of the need for action to address climate change, I’ve been looking at Plato’s old question as to whether democracy is capable of recognising limits and controlling its tendency to excess, or whether limits must be set externally so as to avoid excess, chaos and collapse. Plato gives reasons for the possible asymmetry between knowledge/truth/principle on the one hand and democratic willing on the other. That leaves us with a problem. I shall focus on rhetoric/oratory, related to ethics and politics, with respect to the need to persuade and motivate people to change their behaviour and act in light of the facts of climate crisis. But, of course, the danger is that we end up with people skilled in verbal trickery flattering/deceiving the people, something which takes us very far away from principle.
I search of an answer to my question, I first thought of the parts of the Republic where, in the similes of the sea-captain and of the 'large and powerful animal', Plato condemns the way that politicians flatter the people to gain and retain power. The 'true navigator' refers to the minority who, possessing the necessary skill and expertise, have the strongest claim to rule legitimately. In contrast, the people (the crew) conduct their affairs on the basis of impulse, sentiment and prejudice; they lack both the experience and the knowledge that make for sound navigation (political judgement.) The only leaders that the people admire are sycophants: 'politicians ... are duly honoured ... [if] they profess themselves the people's friends' (Plato: The Republic. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974, p. 376). All who 'mix with the crowd and want to be popular with it' can be directly 'compared ... to the sailors' (p 282 283). And so democracy leads to chaos and tyranny. Socrates/Plato bemoans the fact that there are plenty of charlatan/politicians who take the place of the genuine philosopher and, instead of leading/educating the people, bring out the worst in the public they flatter.
This is all very familiar. Philosophers and their awkward questions are not very popular.
In the Theaetetus, Socrates/Plato talks about a whole profession that is against philosophers:
‘The profession of the great wise ones who are called orators and lawyers; for these persuade men by their art and make them think whatever they like, but they do not teach them. Do you imagine that there are any teachers in the world so clever as to be able to convince others of the truth about acts of robbery or violence, of which they were not eye-witnesses, while a little water is flowing in the clepsydra?’
There is, however, no direct criticism of democracy as in the Republic.
I thought also of the Georgias, Gorgias being the famed teacher of oratory. Here ‘the orators are very far from speaking with a view to what is best; their way is to humour the assembly as if they were children.’ Callicles makes the distinction between two species of oratory; ‘the one a flattery, another which has a real regard for the citizens. But where are the orators among whom you find the latter?’
Socrates/Plato is concerned with the duty of bringing order out of disorder:
‘The good man and true orator has a settled design, running through his life, to which he conforms all his words and actions; he desires to implant justice and eradicate injustice, to implant all virtue and eradicate all vice in the minds of his citizens. He is the physician who will not allow the sick man to indulge his appetites with a variety of meats and drinks, but insists on his exercising self-restraint.’
Such a ‘true orator’ would be interested in objective truth, rather than swaying the feelings of crowds. Such an orator would be very different from the flatterer/orator politicians in the Republic. The 'true orator' is the very person we seek.
What makes this such a fascinating issue is that we are producing countless reports on climate change, but are despairing since both governments and governed seem unresponsive to the facts. Many turn and condemn governments for not caring and individuals for being stupid and greedy. And not caring. That condemnation is misguided. There is a need to develop an awareness of how governments are embedded within a social metabolic order that constrains their scope for action, even when mandated democratically to pursue the desired ends on climate and social justice. And there is a need to develop an awareness of how individuals are situated within socially structured patterns of behaviour, giving them a social identity in which any action beyond self-interest is an irrational sacrifice. Leaving aside the institutional and social conditions of responsiveness, I wish to focus on the conditions of ethical and effective communication.
I think the lack of response is as a result of missing the connections that serve to bridge fact and value. I argue that rhetoric/ethics/politics is key here. That means that we need to do more than speak as a scientist would to other scientists but ought to persuade and motivate, to use the language that gets under skin and into the hearts of people, where it takes root and grows. This is treacherous ground. It wasn’t for nothing that the Sophists were primarily teachers of rhetoric. Regard for the truth only hindered the orator. Plato never actually made that transition from contemplation to action. He recognised the danger of philosophical corruption. He thus reserved objective knowledge for the philosophers, excluding non-initiates. I sometimes suspect that some involved in relaying climate truths are modern day Platonists with a deep scepticism as to human beings as knowledgeable agents. They seem to prefer to keep the truth as their own esoteric possession, offering it to decision- and policy-making elites, with the rest of us worthy only of sufficient noble lies in order to seduce our consent. I argue firmly against this. I argue for transcendent truths and objective standards. But I also argue for the need to combine a concern for right and wrong, good and bad, with the art of persuasion. In light of the need for climate action, we need to bridge the gap between truth and will/motivation; we need to become practical without diluting/distorting principle. We need a democracy that can exercise self-restraint.
This is a critical question, and Plato’s ghost haunts contemporary debates. Plato does see rhetoric as a morally inferior craft, treating the 'master-art of persuasion' as an art of 'flattery'. But then there’s Phaedrus, which refers to the orator's need to "know souls." This would distinguish the true orator above from the flatterer in politics.
Can we have a democracy in which the individuals composing the demos are capable of imposing a rational self-restraint upon their desires, channelling those desires healthily? Can we have a true oratory in which the demos come to acquire and assimilate truth into their character and agency so as to effect the above? Democracy as a flattery in politics, with people coming to be ruled by their worst instincts, sounds very much like the passages in the Republic. Although I am sure they don’t make reference to oratory as such.
Political orators know how to persuade a large gathering. That’s the ethical and effective communication we need to bridge the gap between truth, motivation, will, and action. But whether now is the right moment for persuasion or for the use of some kind of force is a matter for the expert knowledge that needs to govern the use of expertise in persuasion. I argue for persuasion. I am also aware of tendencies to authoritarianism in the camp of environmental politics. I am firmly on the side of democracy and the people. I resist the anti-politics of a very political 'apolitical' technocratic elitist approach. I oppose the notion of environmental philosopher kings.
What appears to be left out of Plato's account of democratic freedom as anarchy is the very idea of democracy itself, i.e. rule by the demos. The emphasis in the treatment of democracy in Book 8 of the Republic is on its ambitions and successes in promoting the personal freedom of individuals, not (as in the Gorgias and the analogies of Book 6) on the demos in assembly as a mass audience requiring the servile attention of political orators. In criticising the atomistic conception of democracy so cogently as a false freedom leading to a collective unfreedom, the idea that the people in democratic assemblies and courts could indeed make momentous and effective decisions on war and peace, life and death, seems in danger of being forgotten. I therefore attempt to link all of these themes together in order to democratize Plato for a modern age, giving us not the elite government of the philosopher ruler but the rule of philosophy through activating the common moral reason of each and all.