VIII*—PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM

by R. F. Stalley
ABSTRACT The idea of freedom plays a key role in Plato's moral and political
thought. In the Republic justice is shown to be beneficial because the just man
alone is truly free. There are parallels here with modern discussions of freedom.
The Laws argues that to be free a city must avoid the extremes of liberty and of
authoritarianism. The legislator should rely on persuasion, not force, so that people
willingly obey his laws. The underlying idea is that we are free if we willingly
follow the demands of reason rather than being coerced by external forces or by
unruly desires.

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T o many readers it will seem paradoxical or even perverse to
suggest that Plato has a doctrine of freedom. After all,
commentators have repeatedly emphasised that the ideal city of the
Republic leaves little room for the kinds of freedom valued by
writers in the liberal tradition.1 Moreover Plato attacks democracy
precisely for its freedom and variety (557b-558c). He even goes
so far as to suggest that, in an ideal state, those whose power of
reason is weak should, for their own good, be enslaved to those in
whom it is strong (590c-d). But it would be a mistake to conclude
on these grounds that Plato was indifferent or positively hostile to
the idea of freedom as such. Although he has little regard for the
kinds of freedom to which we now attach most importance, I shall
argue that there is a real sense in which the idea of freedom plays
a key role in both his moral and his political thought.2
The fundamental task assigned to Socrates in the Republic is to
show that it benefits us to be just. I believe that a central strand in
his argument is the claim that only the just man is truly free. There
is a hint of this in the opening pages where Cephalus, quoting the
aged Sophocles, praises old age as bringing peace and freedom
from sexual desires (329c), but the real argument begins when
Thrasymachus enters the discussion. He proclaims his admiration
1. The best known of these commentators is, of course. Popper 1966, who attacked Plato
vehemently as an enemy of the 'Open Society'. For a more moderate statement of the point
seeKlosko, 1986.155.
2. We are accustomed to distinguish freedom of the will from political freedom. I hope it
will become clear that this distinction is notrelevantto Plato's account.

'Meeting of the Aristotelian Society, held in Senate House, University of London, on

Monday, 9th February, 1998 at 8.15 p.m.
146 R. F. STALLEY

for the tyrant who gets control of a city and does what he wants
with its inhabitants and their possessions. Unlike petty criminals,
who suffer punishment and disgrace, he is generally admired and
regarded as happy. This shows that injustice is 'stronger, freer, and
more masterly than justice' (343c-344c).3 Socrates, on the other
hand, argues that there is nothing desirable about being a ruler
(347a-d). As he sees it, both the unjust man and the unjust city are
weak and powerless because they are riven by dissension. The just
man, by contrast, is wiser, better and more powerful (350e-352d).
Evidently the dispute between Socrates and Thrasymachus hinges

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largely on the question whether it is the just man or the unjust one
who is truly able to do as he wants. This is confirmed when Glaucon
restates Thrasymachus' position. Part of his case is that people
practice justice against their will and as a matter of necessity rather
than because they think it good to do so (358c). By this he means
that only the fear of punishment and disgrace makes people behave
justly. He even argues that 'no one is willingly just' (360c) thus
reversing Socrates' position and representing the criminal who
escapes punishment as truly free.
Socrates' response to this challenge rests on the doctrine of the
tripartite soul and the comparison between soul and city which that
makes possible. Justice in the soul is a condition of inner order and
harmony in which reason, with the aid of spirit, watches over the
appetites so that they do not subvert the natural order of the soul
by enslaving the other parts (442a-b). Thus the just man 'does not
allow any part of himself to do the work of any other part or allow
the various classes within him to meddle with each other. He
regulates well what is really his own and rules himself (443d).
Similarly temperance (sophrosune), which was earlier identified
with self-mastery (430d-431d) is now found to be an agreement
among the parts as to which should rule (442c-d). Injustice, on the
other hand, turns out to be 'a kind of civil war between the three
parts, a meddling and doing of another's work, a rebellion by some
part against the whole soul in order to rule it inappropriately. The
rebellious part is by nature suited to be a slave, while the other class
is not a slave but belongs to the ruling class' (444b). So Plato sees
the inner freedom of the just individual in political terms. The soul
is a city in which the lawful authorities (the reason) are liable to be
forcibly overthrown and enslaved by their subjects.
3. I cite the Republic in the translation of G.M.A. Grube as revised by C. D. C. Reeve.
 PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM 147

The account of the philosopher in the central books of the

Republic is ostensibly introduced to explain Socrates' claim that
his ideal city is possible only if philosophers become kings or kings
become philosophers (473c-e). But, since only the philosopher
who knows the good can be just in the truest sense of the word, it
also provides the philosophical underpinning for the account of
virtue in the individual soul,. From our point of view the most
striking feature of this section is that in the Cave simile (514a-
519d), the education of the philosopher is depicted as a process of
liberation. The prisoner, having been freed from the bonds which

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kept him in the world of shadows, is turned to face the fire, and
then begins the arduous assent culminating in the sight of the sun.
The message is that ignorance and false belief constrain the mind
much as chains constrain the body. We are genuinely free only
when we see the truth, that is when we grasp for ourselves the form
of the Good. But to achieve this we must first be released from the
influence of the appetites, the 'leaden weights' which keep us in
the 'world of becoming' (519a-b). It is clear too that the
philosopher who is released from the cave realises that the things
which concerned him in the past have no importance. So he is freed
from the cares that trouble ordinary men and women (516d).
The idea of injustice as a kind of inner slavery is developed in
Books VIII and IX where Socrates describes the inferior kinds of
constitution and the corresponding kinds of soul. For example, just
as the rulers of the oligarchic city value wealth above everything, so
the oligarchic man's desire for money, like an oriental despot,
makes reason and spirit squat beside it, allowing the former to
calculate only how to obtain more money and permitting the latter
to honour nothing but wealth (553c-d). In a democracy the people
are apparently free, for the city is full of liberty and freedom of
speech and everyone does whatever they want. This city is there-
fore, in a way, the most attractive of constitutions because it is full
of freedom and variety (557b-c). But Socrates' scathing tone shows
that he sees no value in this sort of freedom. Because democracies
do not care what sort of people are put in power, they lack rational
direction (557e-558a). They therefore act, not willingly, but in
ignorance (565b). The democratic man, likewise, is controlled by
all his desires indiscriminately. True opinions and everything which
makes for order and control are expelled from his soul. If it is
suggested that some pleasures and desires should be honoured
148 R. F. STALLEY

while others are checked and enslaved, he insists that all must be
treated alike and honoured as equals. He thus mistakes anarchy and
licence for freedom and lives for the day, gratifying whatever desire
occurs to him (559d-562a). The excessive freedom of the demo-
cratic constitution, if unchecked, leads to tyranny in which a single
person enslaves the whole city. Similarly the most wretched
individual is the tyrannical man who is totally enslaved to his over-
powering lust (572e-575a). The best elements of his soul are
enslaved while the maddest and most depraved elements are in

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charge. His soul, like the tyrannical city, is thus enslaved and
incapable of doing what it wants (577c-d). The only way in which
he could be worse off would be if he actually was tyrant of a city,
for 'a real tyrant is really a slave, compelled to engage in the worst
kind of fawning, slavery and pandering to the worst kind of people.
He's so far from satisfying his desires in any way that it is clear...
that he's in the greatest need of most things and truly poor' (579d-
e). For Plato the tyrannical man epitomises injustice. His wretched
condition is taken as proof that die unjust man is far worse off than
the just (580a-c). So the contrast between justice and injustice is
that between those who are free because they are ruled by reason
and those who are totally unfree because they are slaves to their
passions. This picture is reinforced by the Beast image at the end of
Book DC. There a human being is likened to a composite creature
consisting of a man, a lion and a many-headed wild beast. To say
that justice pays is to say that it benefits us to put the man in charge
so that he may care for the beast, like a farmer, with the aid of the
lion. To say that injustice pays is to say that it benefits us to
strengthen the beast until it enslaves the lion and the man (588b-
589b).
These passages leave no doubt that, in arguing his case for
justice, Plato helps himself to the language of freedom, with all its
favourable overtones. But mis does not prove that he genuinely has
a doctrine of freedom, still less that his doctrine is worthy of serious
attention. On the surface, at least, there seem to be two major
objections to Plato's mode of argument. The first is that he relies
on the claim that those who act against the demands of reason are
not doing what they really want. His star case here is that of the
tyrannical man. As Plato describes him he is like a drug addict,
unable to resist his craving. We may readily concede that, if this
 PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM 149

picture was accurate, the tyrannical man would not be free. But
clearly the tyrant admired by Thrasymachus is nothing like this.
All he wants is to satisfy his appetites and he uses his intelligence
effectively to achieve this goal. Similar points could be made about
the other kinds of individual described in the Republic. For
example, we might say that the oligarchic man genuinely wants
money and is therefore free when he pursues that goal.
A second source of difficulty is that Plato may seem to blur two
distinct arguments, one to the effect that the just man is free to

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direct his own life and that of his community in accordance with
the demands of reason, and the other to the effect that the
philosopher is free to contemplate the truth. Although these
arguments are alike in treating the appetites as constraints from
which we should seek liberation, they apparently point to different
conclusions. The just man is free to arrange his life and that of
others in the most satisfactory way, the philosopher is free to turn
away from this life to contemplate the reality of the forms. This
criticism is closely related to a complaint often made about the
arguments by which Socrates in Republic IX seeks to prove that
the life of the just man is more genuinely pleasant than that of the
unjust (580c-586e). Those arguments hinge on the idea that the
philosopher's life has truer pleasures than those of other lives. But
it is far from clear that points about the pleasures of philosophy
have any relevance to the claim that the life of justice is pleasantest.
According to Annas there is a confusion here which results from a
failure to distinguish different kinds of rationality.4 The just man
ensures that all parts of his soul achieve the greatest satisfaction of
which they are capable, through the exercise of practical rationality.
But if the philosopher achieves pleasures unknown to others that
is because he exercises theoretical rationality.
To see how Plato might defend himself against these criticisms
we need to look closely at die account of the tripartite soul in Book
IV and particularly at the role assigned there to reason. When
Socrates first considers whether the soul has three parts, corres-
ponding to the three classes in the city, he suggests that the same
characteristics can be attributed both to a city and to its individual
citizens. The Thracians and Scythians, for example, are said to have
a spirited character (to thumoeides), the Greeks are characterised

4. Annas 1981,310-313.
150 R. F. STALLEY

by love of learning (to philomathes) and the Phoenicians and

Egyptians by love of money (to philochrematon). So Socrates
raises the question whether we learn with one part of ourselves, get
angry with another and feel the desires of the appetites with a third
(435e-436b). Here each part of the soul is apparently identified
with a kind of motivation. Reason seeks to learn, spirit seeks to
fight and the appetites seek gratifications primarily of a physical
kind. On this model one would expect the character and actions of
the soul as a whole to result from a contest of strength between
these various motives. If reason wins I will be a philosopher; if

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appetite wins I may be a glutton or a lecher. But, as soon becomes
clear, this is not Socrates' view. In describing the virtues of the soul
he claims that it is 'appropriate for the rational part to rule since it
is really wise and exercises forethought on behalf of the whole
soul' (44 le). Similarly we call someone wise 'because of that small
part of himself that rules in him and has within it the knowledge of
what is advantageous for each part and for the whole soul...' (442c).
The most obvious interpretation of this kind of talk is to suppose
that, rather than having goals of its own, reason seeks to maximise
the fulfilment of all desires, but that would sit very badly with the
account of reason as the part which loves learning and leads people
to become philosophers. Some commentators would see here the
source of major difficulties in Plato's moral and political philo-
sophy, but it is I believe, possible to give a more favourable account.
Fundamental to this is Plato's conception of the good, which is not
only the ultimate guide to our practical thinking but also the source
of all knowledge and truth.5 Thus the rational element in our souls
is above all the element that loves the good. The underlying thought
here is evidently that goodness consists in some kind of rational
order. Our reason seeks not merely to contemplate this order but to
model our souls upon it (443c-e). For Plato, therefore, there is no
distinction between practical and theoretical wisdom. In creating
a rational order within the soul reason will have to curb some
desires altogether while others it will allow to be satisfied to a
moderate degree. In this way all parts of the soul will attain the
truest satisfactions of which they are capable (586e). But this does
not, of course, mean that the goodness of the soul consists in any
form of gratification. Since the philosopher grasps the form of the

5. For a fuller account of these points see Cooper 1977.

 PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM 151

good, only he can create order within his own soul and thus be
genuinely virtuous, though others may no doubt have a secondary
virtue, based on true belief about what is good. Similarly the philo-
sopher is free, not because he has some faculty of free choice, but
because his decisions are a response to a true vision of the good.
There are significant connections between Plato's account of
freedom and those given by some recent philosophers, who have
pointed to difficulties in the traditional account of moral freedom
as the ability to do what one wants. The problem they see is that
drug addicts, kleptomaniacs and the like seem to do what they

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want—at least they act on their desires—but would not usually be
regarded as free. The reason for this is that they do not identify with
the desires in question. The drug addict, for example, may wish
that he did not have his desire and struggle to get rid of it. Frankfurt
introduced the notion of 'second order' desires to describe such
situations.6 Besides his first order desire for heroin the addict may
also have a second order desire not to desire heroin. Because the
first order desire on which he acts does not conform to this second
order desire we do not regard the addict as free. Frankfurt saw that
this account needs some elaboration In particular he recognised
that, besides first and second order desires, there could be desires
of the third or even higher orders. Thus there is no obvious reason
to identify a person with his or her second order desires, as opposed
to desires of some other order. Frankfurt therefore introduced the
concept of 'decisive' identification or commitment. 'When a
person identifies himself decisively with one of his... desires the
commitment "resounds" throughout the potentially endless arrays
of higher orders'. If someone, 'without reservation or conflict',
wants to be motivated a particular desire, 'the fact that his second
order volition to be moved by [that] desire is a decisive one means
that there is no room for questions concerning the pertinence of
desires or volitions of higher orders'.7 Other philosophers have
dealt with the problem by distinguishing between desires and what
Taylor calls 'strong evaluations', i.e. evaluations which 'involve
discriminations of right or wrong, better or worse, higher or lower,
which are not rendered valid by our own desires, inclinations, or
choices, but rather stand independent of these and offer standards

6. Frankfurt 1971.
7. Frankfurt 1971,91; cf. Frankfurt 1987, passim.
152 R. F. STALLEY

by which they can be judged'.8 On such a view the person is

identified with his or her [strong] evaluations. Thus for an act of
mine to be free two conditions must be satisfied: (a) it must be the
product of some desire which I actually have, and (b) that desire
itself must be in accordance with my evaluational system. For
example the addict who acts on his desire for heroin is not free if
he rejects that desire as bad or unworthy of him.
Behind these modern theories of freedom lies the perceived need
to distinguish between what someone happens to desire and what

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he or she really wants, without relying on some mysterious doctrine
of 'the self. While Plato does not have a concept of 'the self as
such it might be thought that he, in effect, treats the rational element
of the soul as the real self and stipulates that only its desires are
genuinely ours. But his position is more complex than this. In the
Republic he argues that only the city governed by those with the
natural aptitude to be rulers is genuinely one. All others are more
or less disunited. Similarly, he claims, the individual soul is truly
unified only when governed by its rational element. This point is
argued at length in Republic VIII where the inferior cities are
shown to be more and more prone to stasis—civil war. Inferior
souls are likewise progressively more prone to inner stasis. They
are thus less and less able to act as a unity. One point Plato has in
mind here is that only an individual whose behaviour is governed
by a consistent set of values is able to act effectively. Thus only
such an individual is free.
One might, of course, respond to this by questioning Plato's
assumption that the soul of a bad man cannot be unified. Could he
not be single-mindedly committed to evil ends in much the same
way that the good man is single-mindedly committed to good ones?
While Plato does not discuss this point directly, his answer is clear
enough. He believes that everyone has some glimmering of the
Good and seeks after it. 'Every soul pursues the good and does
whatever it does for its sake. It divines that the good is something
but it is perplexed and cannot adequately grasp what it is or acquire
the sort of stable beliefs it has about other things....' (505e-506a).
While the exact interpretation of this passage is controversial, it
clearly implies that even the wicked have some apprehension of
the good. Thus the soul of the bad man or woman is necessarily in

8. Taylor 1989,4; see also Taylor 1976,281-99, and Watson 1975,205-20.

 PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM 153

a state of inner strife, since, however strong its evil appetites, it

must also have good desires which will conflict with them. So only
those whose lives are governed by a true apprehension of the good
can have a truly unified soul. In making these points Plato is
building on Socratic insights. Socrates insisted, not only that we
all really want the good, but that the unexamined life is not worth
living. He submitted people to examination through the elenchus
which forces those with false conceptions of the good to contradict
themselves. This method evidently presupposes that everyone has

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some true beliefs about what we would call moral matters, so that
those who put forward false views cannot avoid self-contradiction.9
Plato's development of this is to suggest that, since all of us have
some inclination to the good, those with mistaken values must be
in a state of inner conflict. Given this claim, he is entitled to argue
that the unjust man or woman cannot do what he or she really
wants. Such people cannot therefore be truly free.
Many philosophers have, of course, agreed with Plato that we
act freely only in so far as we are rational. A stumbling block for
many such theories is the difficulty they have in providing a
satisfactory account of responsibility. It is generally taken as
axiomatic that only those who act freely merit praise or blame,
punishment or reward. But if no one who acts wrongly is genuinely
free, it seems that no one really deserves blame or punishment.
Plato would not be troubled by this argument because he does not
see freedom in his sense as a necessary condition of responsibility.
He emphatically rejects retributive theories of punishment10 and
argues that the purpose of punishment is to 'cure' the offender.''
Some scholars have taken this use of the word 'cure' to imply that
Plato views punishment as literally a form of medical treatment.12
Elsewhere I have argued that Plato would, rather, see punishment
and blame as elements in a comprehensive system designed to train
citizens in virtue.13 On either interpretation he clearly would not
regard wrongdoers as exempt from blame or punishment merely
9. See, for example Frede 1996,9.
10. Protagoras 324b-c; Laws 934a-b.
11. Gorgias 476a-479c; Republic 380a-b; 409e-410a, 445a, 591 a-b; Laws 731 b-d, 735d-
736a, 843d, 853b-855a, 862b-863a, 933e-934c, 941d-942a, 957e.
12. See Saunders 1991, esp. ch. 5. For a critique of this view see Stalley 1996.
13. Stalley 1995.
154 R. F. STALLEY

because they were unfree in the sense we have been discussing.14

The bad man who is dominated by appetite does not act freely in
Plato's terms but his condition still calls for treatment. So, although
Plato believes that the wicked are unfree, he can still regard such
people as responsible in the sense of being fit candidates for blame
or punishment.
The kind of freedom described in the Republic can be attained
only by philosophers, so even in the ideal city the number of people
who can be free in this sense is tiny. Thus it may look as though

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Plato's doctrine of freedom has little political relevance. But in the
Laws Plato describes an ideal city markedly different from that of
the Republic. For example, citizens are no longer divided into three
classes and there are no proposals for the abolition of property and
the family. Indeed all citizens are expected to marry and to have
their own farms. All will take at least some part in government. But
the most important difference is that, instead of proposing the rule
of philosopher kings, Plato now argues that law should be supreme.
The constitution involves an elaborate system of checks and
balances to ensure this. No individual can exercise power on his
own and all official decisions are subject to scrutiny. These political
changes are associated with a change of emphasis in Plato's
epistemology. He no longer distinguishes sharply between know-
ledge and true belief (632c, 653a). The constitution, accordingly,
depends, not on the knowledge of philosopher kings, but on reason
as embodied chiefly in its code of law but also in its educational
system and in the experience of its older and wiser citizens.
Two passages are particularly relevant to the understanding of
freedom that underlies these proposals. In the first, 693d-701e,
Plato claims that, if a city is to enjoy freedom and friendship
together with wisdom, it must combine elements of both monarchy
and democracy. The Persians achieved this under Cyrus and later
under Darius. These rulers gave their subjects a share of freedom.
The soldiers therefore had friendly feelings towards their
commanders and were willing to face danger. The king was not
jealous if anyone showed the ability to give good advice, but rather
honoured such people In this way they pooled their wisdom and,
as a result, things went well for them. However their successors
Cambyses and Xerxes lacked all self-discipline, so, under them,

14. See Laws 860c-864b.

 PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM 155

die Persians met with disasters. Similarly the Athenians at the time
of the Persian invasions were victorious because they willingly
'enslaved themselves' to their ancestral laws and felt a deep
comradeship with one another. But later they too went into decline.
The rot set in when they neglected the traditional rules of music.
This led to lawlessness and indiscipline which spread to all aspects
of life. Citizens were no longer willing to enslave themselves to
their rulers or their parents, they refused even to be subject to law
and had no sense of obligation to god or man. Unlimited freedom
thus brought disaster to Athens in much the same way that

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unmitigated despotism brought disaster to the Persians.
It is tempting to read this as simply a recognition on Plato's part
of the need to combine freedom with order. If this were right his
position might not be very different from that of liberal thinkers
who, while setting a high value on freedom, recognise that there
must be restrictions on what we do and thus argue for 'freedom
under the law'. But this interpretation would be a mistake. Plato
insists repeatedly that the Athenians at the time of the Persian wars
were 'slaves to the laws' and he is equally prepared to say that they
were slaves to their rulers and to their elders. This language must
have seemed at least as paradoxical to Plato's first readers as it does
to us. What it makes clear is that he wants all citizens to live in
complete subjection to lawful authority. They must thus avoid, on
the one hand, the kind of liberty that consists in being able to do
whatever one wants and, on the other, the arbitrary rule of despots
who think only of satisfying their own desires. The ideal situation
is one in which they willingly permit a strict code of law to govern
every part of their lives.
In the second key passage, 719e-723d, Plato argues that laws
should be preceded by persuasive 'preambles' or 'preludes'. He
explains his point by describing the practice of two kinds of doctor.
There are, firstly, slave doctors who have no real understanding of
medicine but picked up such skill as they have by watching their
masters. These rush from one patient to another and simply issue
instructions about what is to be done without giving or receiving
any explanations. The free doctor, on the other hand, listens to his
patients and their relatives and does not give instructions until he
has explained matters to them and thus secured their agreement. In
this way he wins his patients over by persuasion before treating
156 R. F. STALLEY

them. Plato believes that the method of the legislator should be like
that of the free doctor. He should construct persuasive preambles
to ensure that, so far as possible, the citizens voluntarily conform
to the law.
It may look here as though Plato means to win the citizens over
by rational argument and sees the authority of law as dependent on
their free consent.15 But this is surely a mistake. Those not
persuaded by the preamble will still be compelled to obey the law
on pain of punishment, and, in any case, the preambles set out in
the Laws are not conspicuous for rational argument. With the

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exception of the preamble to the law on atheism, they are
exhortations which often rely on what we might see as appeals to
prejudice or superstition.16 Moreover the entire educational and
social system of the city is designed to induce conformity. There
is no place for airing opinions contrary to those embodied in its
constitution and legal code. This is what we would expect given
Plato's conception of persuasion. As the Timaeus makes clear, he
believes that, in so far as there is anything good in this world, it is
the product of reason which brings potentially disorderly materials
into a state of order and harmony (47e-48a). But the materials on
which reason works do not themselves possess powers of reason.
Reason has, rather, to make use of their natural propensities in
much the same way that a woodworker might use the natural
characteristics of the wood. Similarly, if persuasion is to bring our
souls to order, it must be directed, initially at least, to the irrational
elements. In other words, although it is rational in the sense that it
comes from reason it is not necessarily rational in the sense of
appealing to reason.
The upshot of this is that the political philosophy of the Laws
leaves little room for some of the freedoms most valued by writers
in the liberal tradition. In particular citizens cannot adopt radically
new styles of life and they cannot challenge the principles on which
the city is based. Freedom of speech must be therefore limited.
Popper is thus right to suggest that Plato is opposed to the Open
Society. But there are at least two important respects in which the
citizens of the Laws could be called free. The first is that they are
free from exploitation and the exercise of arbitrary power. The
15. See Bobonich 1992, 365-388; Hall 1981,93^t.
16. See Stalley 1994.
 PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM 157

second is that, because they are governed by persuasion rather than

force, they willingly obey the laws. Their position is thus radically
different from that of slaves who are expected to respond to
commands rather than exhortation.
On the surface these political freedoms seem very different from
the moral freedom of the philosopher in the Republic. But they both
stem from a single pattern of thought. Underlying them is the
opposition between reason and necessity and the corresponding
distinction between persuasion and force. Although most explicit
in the Timaeus and Laws this is also evident in the Republic, with

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its persistent contrast between reason which seeks to secure willing
agreement and the appetites which exercise force. It may be
significant too that the Republic begins with an exchange between
Socrates and Polemarchus which contrasts force and rational
persuasion (327e). In Plato's view one is free in so far as one
responds to reason and is free from the bonds of irrational necessity.
The latter can take two forms. Internally we may be constrained by
unruly passions and desires, Externally we may be constrained by
the irrational practices of a disorderly city. Only the philosopher
living in the ideal city of the Republic can be free in the fullest sense
of the word. But Plato seems to recognise that his is a situation
which may never occur in this world (472c-d, 592a-b). We may
however aspire to imitate the Republic's pictures of the ideal state
and of the ideally just philosopher. This means that freedom is not
an all-or-nothing matter. The more we willingly allow our lives to
be governed by reason the more free we are.
On this view freedom both in the state and in the individual rests,
not on the possibility of unconstrained choice or the ability to 'do
otherwise', but rather on the capacity to recognise truth. A
mathematics student who has no choice whether to believe
Pythagoras' theorem may feel, in the modern jargon, that she
'owns' this knowledge the more she understands it. Similarly
Platonic citizens have no choice whether to accept the laws which
govern the city but will be free to the extent that they obey these
laws willingly because they understand their underlying reasons.
This kind of freedom falls far short of anything we would recognise
as political freedom. In particular, because it sees freedom as a
matter of knowledge rather than choice, it can allow no room for
freedom of thought. On the other hand it would not, one suspects,
158 R. F. STALLEY

have seemed so obviously inadequate to Plato's contemporaries.

Even in cities like Athens which prided themselves on their liberty,
freedom of thought was severely restricted. Evidently what
mattered most for the Greeks was being a free man or woman rather
than a slave and living in a free city rather than one controlled by
a tyrant or a foreign power. So the fundamental distinction was that
between rule willingly accepted and rule imposed by force.
Philosophy Department
University of Glasgow

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Glasgow G12 8QQ

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