Persuasion in Ancient Greece
Andrew Scholtz, Instructor
Study Guides. . .
Modern Readings 2
Access to Readings
Four selections accessed via myCourses > PDF Course Readings. Read PDF docs labeled as follows:
- Weber: Economy and Society (excerpts) — read only pp. 241-254, 266-271
- Finley: Max Weber and the Ancient Greek State (excerpts) — Read pp. 93-99 = "Greek Demagogues and Domination (Herrschaft)"
- Michels: Democracy and the Iron Law of Oligarchy (excerpts) — read pp. 342-356
- Ober: Mass & Elite (excerpts) — read just those two paragraphs, p. 334 ("The solidarity of. . .") to p. 335 (". . . to take someone prisoner")
Readings Journal Entries
I promised you a debate about Pericles and his leadership; I intend to honor that promise.
So, you can think of Tuesday's class as the one that will see our debate — or rather, focused discussion of democracy and its problematics — finally happen.
So I'll pose the question as a kind of multiple choice with justification:
TO EXPLAIN THE LEADERSHIP OF A PERICLES, WHICH COMES CLOSEST TO SHEDDING SOME KIND OF LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM? iS IT:
- Weber on "charismatic leadership"?
- Michael on the "iron law of oligarchy"?
- A more or less even mix?
- Or can you articulate ways that neither theory satisfies. . . .
EXPLAIN YOUR CHOICE.
Note that WHATEVER your answer, you are being forced to engage the ideas of those two thinkers, plus the critique by Finley of Weber, and by Ober of Michels. (In his chapter, Michels does not actually comment on Athenian democracy, but Ober takes his work as a challenge to the idea of Athenian democracy as democratic).
Introductory Material
I have chosen these readings because of their pertinence to this course. At a more general level, they:
- Theorize — and problematize — true democratic government, ancient or modern (Michels, Weber)
- Clarify-criticize the perspectives expressed by the above (Finley, Ober)
Michels, but especially Weber, is difficult and, frankly, not always pertinent to the course. Thus Finley becomes particularly important because he doesn't just critique the perspective he takes to be shared by Michels and Weber; he summarizes and clarifies — mostly Weber but Michels too, a little bit.
So, all four can serve as "optics" through which to look when investigating the following question:
How did the modalities of persuasion used during the classical Athenian democracy (ca. 461-ca. 323) promote or hinder real democracy, whether of the kind that Dahl talks about (strong equality, enlightened understanding, etc.), or perhaps whatever you take to be democracy? Do ancient writers read for the second half of this class explore the question? What do they say? Does that continue to hold value today?
Can these readings, in other words, help us understand not just the mechanics-dynamics of political speech in a democracy, but also the "ethics thing" — how the means justify/invalidate the ends? Did democracy then, maybe even does democracy now, work?
Specific Study Questions
Weber
Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German sociologist best known for his ideas on religion and economy (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1904-1905). But he also had influential things to say as to the various ways that political authority is legitimized. We'll be especially interested in his idea of the charismatic leader as an "ideal type."
Weber's notion of "ideal type."
Ideal type is not a perfect type: the ideal student, the perfect beach, the perfect martini — that is not what Weber is talking about.
Rather, it is a heuristic, a tool of study. Thus an ideal type (German ideal Typus) is "ideal" in the sense that it maps out criteria, standards by which to evaluate how a given instance of a thing — in particular, a given type of social, political, or economic behavior — relates to the class to which it belongs and to other members of that class. Thus it is the "idea" of a thing, an intellectual conception of it. You may not find exact parallels in the real world, but no matter: ideal types merely serve as yardsticks or measuring rods against which to make sense of our observations.
(I want to study bureaucracy. I look at a number of instances of bureaucracy and abstract from them key characteristics. I then assemble those characteristics into an "ideal type" that, though it conforms exactly to no given instance, nonetheless helps me gauge how instances of bureaucracy are both related to, and differ from, one another. I thus deepen my understanding of the phenomenon, both as a whole and in its individual instances.)
Charismatic leader as ideal type.
One such ideal type is for Weber charismatic authority, one of several types of "legitimate domination," by which Weber means power exercised in a way so as to procure recognition and acquiescence.
So there may be no single person out there who answers exactly to Weber's notion of the charismatic leader, that is, the leader whose forceful personality gathers around her- or himself a following. But can this model and its variations / permutations help us understand the shape of leadership under the Athenian democracy?
Questions:
- What is "charismatic authority"? By what criteria (diagnostic signs) do we recognize a charismatic leader? Can you think of, maybe make up, an example? What is charisma? How does it gather around it an obedient following?
- Are there different types of of charismatic authority? Can it / does it belong to any process of political change? What can it become (ch 14, pp. 1111 ff.)?
- Where does Weber start talking about Athenian democracy? How (according to Weber) is leadership under democracy charismatic?
- Is charismatic authority inherently unstable, or can it solidify into an enduring pattern?
- Can you relate any ancient readings from earlier in the course to Weber's concept of charismatic authority? Any modern ones?
Michels
Robert Michels (1876-1936) was a German sociologist and student of Max Weber. He started out politically as a socialist. Drawn to Italian culture, he taught for many years in Italy and, in 1924, joined Mussolini's Fascist Party.
He is best known for his "iron law of oligarchy," the idea that political systems tend to spawn an elite class running things in ways favorable to itself. Fundamentally, Michels wants to know if any non-oligarchic state or government is possible in practice (as opposed to in theory). In other words, will a given non-oligarchy — say, a democracy — inevitably lapse into oligarchy, i.e., government run by an elite "political class" looking out, first and foremost, for its own interests (not those of the collectivity). Note that Michels to a large extent talks about socialist elites that (so he claims) inevitably betray the principles they are supposed to uphold. But how might any of his arguments apply to classical Athens? How about to modern liberal democracies?
Strikingly, certain of Michels' arguments sound a lot like arguments found in the constitutional debate in Herodotus — specifically, Darius on how democracy or oligarchy will inevitably lead to monarchy (click here).
No less strikingly, Callicles' ideas in Plato's Gorgias seem to have affinities with Michels'. Indeed, one could find resonances in a number of our primary sources.
Specific questions:
- What are the principles Michels argues from? What is his logic? Why (according to Michels) does democracy inevitably turn out to be oligarchic in practice?
- How would any of this have application to the Athenian state?
- Does any of this relate to previous modern readings (Dahl's, Ober's, those of yours truly)?
Finley
Finley is especially useful because he summarizes and critiques Weber's notion of Athenian democracy as charismatic authority. For Finley, the charismatic leader under Athenian democracy is, basically, the demagogue, and Finley is skeptical that demagogues were a constant or defining feature of Athenian democracy. So, simply this: what do you think of Finley's critique, whether of the notion of charismatic authority generally, or of its application specifically? Even if we agree with points Finley raises, can charismatic authority as an ideal type still be meaningful in our investigations? Also, how does Finley see Michels fitting in with Weber?
Ober
Those two paragraphs show how Ober's book is, in a way, a response to the challenge posed by Michels, namely, to identity and to explain systems that were/are democratic both in name and in fact. Ober offers Athenian democracy as an example of the real McCoy, and we do very much need to respect his point of view. That doesn't, however, exempt his ideas from critical (re)evaluation.