What Plato’s Phaedrus Can Teach Us About the Modern Politician
President Truman once famously stated that the definition of a good leader in the free world is, “the man or woman who can persuade people to do what they don’t want to do and like it”. Such ideology is the symptom of a sickness that democracy over the past 300 years has increasingly fallen ill to. The mobilization of citizens by politicians, or put more simply - the persuasion of the masses by the few, has become the most crucial skillset an aspiring leader must develop in order for their success.
Plato famously argued in his Republic that nations should be governed by philosopher kings. In contrast to Truman’s definition, Plato argues that a good political leader is defined by their unwavering pursuit of the truth, moral virtue, and well-being of the community.
In an analysis of modern politics, investigating Plato’s more philosophical works rather than just his political ones provides more context for not only how he thought politics ought to operate, but upon what values he thought they should be built. In this article, I’d like to put the virtues of Plato’s Phaedrus — a dialogue about the value of speech and the danger of persuasion — into a conversation with modern politics.
An Unusual Setting
The Phaedrus is Plato’s only work that depicts the father of Philosophy, Socrates, as outside the city of Athens and in the country side. The unusual setting is reflected in the dialogue’s attempt to connect man to nature in a more metaphysical sense than much of Plato’s other works.
Out in the country, Socrates discusses and exchanges speeches with Phaedrus, an Athenian aristocrat. The two discuss love, the nature of the soul, and the centrality of truth to good rhetoric. It is on this last point that Socrates spends most of his focus, outlining for Phaedrus that a good orator understands the philosophical practice of dialectic, which is the process of inquiry towards the truth.
It is this assertion that ties the value of truth to the value of rhetoric and helps shed light on the dysfunction of our modern politics.
The Value and Content of Speech
Plato defines good speech as understanding “true rhetoric”. He describes true rhetoric as kin to philosophy; a good orator’s persuasive aim is at nothing other than the truth. Much like philosophy is described by Plato as the practice and pursuit of loving wisdom, true rhetoric can be described as the spread of truth. In this way, the value of speech for Plato was conditional on its deliberative quality and perceptive aim.
Much of the Enlightenment Era thinkers that influenced the creation of Western government maintained an emphasis on the importance of speech. John Stuart Mill, Locke, and Kant all made similar arguments about the centrality of deliberative discourse to politics and human progress. If every person is given the right to propose opinions and ideas, then the best ones will rise to the top. As a result of enduring constant criticism, a community can come increasingly closer to the truth through deliberative discourse. This is the philosophical concept that fueled the support behind freedom of speech laws in the 18th century. In this way, traces of Plato’s convictions about rhetoric run within our political structures today.
However, a close reading of the Phaedrus suggests that the Enlightenment concept of deliberative discourse fails to consider that bad rhetoric, despite being under false intention and poor moral practice, may still be highly effective in its persuasive efforts.
The Danger of Bad Rhetoric
Because rhetoric is a facet of philosophy, it has enormous power. Therefore, if rhetoric is performed by those with wisdom and right moral intention, it can be a highly progressive tool for the health of a nation. Plato realized this, but he also realized that a skilled orator may successfully employ rhetoric for personal gain or purposes divorced from truth.
In this sense, Plato realizes and acknowledges that rhetoric must not be true in order to be persuasive. For all its manipulative measures, rhetoric can be the tool of democracy’s most fatal enemy… demagogues.
Demagogues were political leaders who mobilized support from the masses through persuasive measures. These types of leaders were of the utmost concern for Socrates and Plato, as they utilized rhetoric to appeal to people’s desires rather than common reason. Instead of aiming at true rhetoric, demagogues use mobilizing tactics to persuade people in support of their personal agendas. Historically speaking, they tend to rise to power with widespread support but fall from it leaving vicious polarization.
The Modern Politician: A Practitioner of Poor Rhetoric
Returning to President Truman’s definition of a good leader, it resonates more with Plato’s warnings of poor rhetoric than with his descriptions of true speech.
At the birth of republican democracy, elected leaders were fashioned closer to good orators. In fact, the executive branch of the United States of America was initially reserved for the “disinterested statesman”. The presidential office was constitutionally designed for the man deemed best fit for the office rather than the man who wanted it most. However, along the course of the past 300 years, political campaigning has evolved to a point in which every single one of our elected officials must convince the public that they are the best candidate for the job, whether its true or not.
Within the competitive atmosphere of modern politics, personal advantage has become the most prevalent virtue of those who seek leadership.
At its core, this reality can be best described by Plato’s explanation of rhetoric. If our politics are governed by those who rely on persuasion to push personal agendas rather than to deliberate on the truth, than our community will become divided on basis of those agendas.
The increasing polarization surrounding politics is not the citizens doing. Too often do political scientists and thinkers point to external factors (ie; the economy, social evolutions, technological development) as causalities for rapid division between political parties. Instead, I offer that the main factor contributing to political polarization is the quality of political leaders we elect, which is in turn the result of a fundamentally flawed democratic system.
The representation and leadership of a people, even in a democratic republic, is expected to be the best quality of person found within the citizenship. While the Republic makes suggestions for how this virtuous political leadership ought to be ensured, the Phaedrus outlines what constitutes virtuous rhetoric.
It doesn’t take much reflection to realize that modern politicians are all simply rhetoricians; by designing a system that rewards true rhetoric rather than the type used in demagoguery, we may hope to heal the modern political division.
