The Tragedy of Democracy without Authority: A Reflection on Maritain and Thucydides

The Tragedy of Democracy without Authority: A Reflection on Maritain and Thucydides | Jose Maria J. Yulo, Ed.D. | May 5, 2011 | Ignatius Insight

Editor's note: This essay was presented to The American Maritain Association at the 2010 Annual Meeting, held at Walsh University, North Canton, Ohio.

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Scrupulous fear of the gods is the very thing which keeps the Roman Commonwealth together. To such an extraordinary height is this carried among them, both in private and public business, that nothing could exceed it. –Histories, Polybius
 
Infirmity doth still neglect all office
Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body. – King Lear, Shakespeare
 

In the Poetics, Aristotle described the distinctly Hellenic medium of tragedy thusly. It was "the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself...with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions" (p. 1460). From Aeschylus to Sophocles and finally Euripides, there can be observed certain unspoken dynamics within tragedy. The tragic figures of Agamemnon, Oedipus, and Pentheus all share a binding doom which can be traced to the ramifications of their chosen actions in the course of their respective tales. There are subtle differences between what brings about suffering and pathos to each of these men. Aeschylus' Agamemnon agrees to divinely mandated sacrifice of his own Iphigenia. Pentheus refuses to bow to the new god from the east. Oedipus is the unhappy mean between these two in his having complicity, albeit unknowing, leading to his father's death. To study tragedy, it seems, is to attempt to understand humanity's role in bringing it about.
 
In keeping with this introspection, there can be found in antiquity separate accounts, historical rather than theatrical, telling of even greater tragedy than the abovementioned tomes. The Athenian general Thucydides, with keen and sobering perspective, wrote of the greatest of all Hellenic falls, that of a war to end Greece's golden age. In his history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides described the descent of Greece from its height of victory over Persia and into a horrific conflict between its two powers, Athens and Sparta. This civil war will provide a link between tragedy and the study of politics, most specifically the politics of democracy.
 
Jacques Maritain outlined some potentially marring elements to particular democracies. Democracies were acutely problematic when they did not collectively comprehend the necessity of legitimate authority permeating the polis. Lacking this understanding, power was elevated in authority's absence. Ultimately, this led to the degeneration of societies thus constructed because, "To separate power and authority is to separate force and justice" (p. 94). Thucydides told of two accounts wherein this descent, or tragic fall, is most evident. These are the accounts of the Melian Dialogue, and the siege of Corcyra. In examining these accounts, Maritain's championing of democracies wed to legitimate authority has special import nearly twenty centuries ago. Toward this end, a brief discussion of the causes and outcomes of the Peloponnesian War will commence, followed by the two narratives abovementioned, and finally a particular perspective from Maritain's political thought will be discussed.
 
There are few scholars today who have written as much on the subject of Thucydides' histories as Yale's Donald Kagan. The Sterling Professor of History and Classics is noted for his four-volume opus on the Peloponnesian War, and his ability to draw parallels from this saga to more recent and contemporary world conflicts. It is precisely this that Kagan produced in his On the Origins of War (1996).

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Comments

[Manuel G. Daugherty Razetto]

Nothing is as startling or arduous to make up as the unforseen ascent of culture in Greece. As we totally depend from history to understand who we truly are it is indispensable to be choosy with our sources; moreover, historians -who interpret them- need to be thoroughly scrutinized, since to be a great historian is possibly the most singular of cognitive honours.

Thucydides is a fine choice; he described with reason and imagination and, unlike Herodotus, avoided contriving.

[Manuel G. Daugherty Razetto]

Dr Yulo cites Donald Kagan, who delights telling us how Athenians were not what we think of them; I believe it should be mentioned that Spartans have been misrepresented depending on who wrote what about them. Aristotle is vastly clear exposing the Laconians/Lacones and their shortcomings. I'll only mention their constitution as is exhaustively critized by the Stagirite; as well as how they were the only impediment to any possible unification of all Greece.

If Aristotle unmasks Sparta it was Plutarch who created the so called myth about the Spartans that trascended through centuries. He exalted them shamelessly.

[Manuel G. Daugherty Razetto]

One would also like to pose that the existance of Democracy can well be connected to the unforgettable years during which Pericles epitomized the best that the Hellenistic glory has given us; however it is a thorny task trying to unravel the curious concept Greeks had about Democracy; during Pericles it shone as a high virtue but in a parallel way slaves were thought quite acceptable and women relegated to a second tier.