On Socrates, Spinoza, Hobbes, and Madison on the necessitating rationale for government

In re-reading Book 1 of Plato’s Republic, while preparing my discussion notes, I was struck by the following assertion, “[A] if there should be a city of good men only, immunity from office-holding would be as eagerly contended for as office is now, and there it would be made plain that in very truth [B] the true ruler does not naturally seek his own advantage but that of the ruled; [C] so that every man of understanding would rather choose to be benefited by another than to be bothered with benefiting him.” (347D, in Shorey’s translation). My present interest is not in the foreshadowing of the more famous claim that philosophers must be forced to rule. Nor is my interest in the keenly felt sense by good men of the opportunity costs in ruling that is visible in [A] and [C].

Rather, I realized that in [A] there is further presupposition that for Socrates even in a city of good men only, rulers and office holders would be necessary at all. (I allow that Socrates is not saying that the good men are wise.) I call this the ‘Socratic presupposition.’ I would have thought that a collective of good men wouldn’t need a polity, but could remain in anarchy. And in order to explain my surprise I offer two distinctions and a detour through some early modern texts.

Now, compare Socrates’ claim with one of Madison’s most famous sentences, writing as Publius (1788), is “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” (Federalist 51) I tend to think of the antecedent as asserting a robust empirical generalization (viz. men are not angels). I will call this the ‘no angel generalization.’ I tend to think of the conclusion as a kind of explanation, even justification (in social theory these may come together, after all) for why governments are required.

I am going to ignore the complications that involve the logic and semantics of conditionals in a subjunctive mood. But even having stipulated that much, if this were a journal article in analytic philosophy, I would tie myself in knots in trying to analyze out the exact nature of Madison’s famous statement. I am leaving aside a big can of worms.

Instead, I am interested in making a distinction between two projects. For in the Madisonian context, the very same generalization (‘'humans are no angels’) can enter into two kinds of projects: first, one such I have dubbed (i) ‘proto-mechanism design.’ This involves an interest in the operation and normatively desirable improvement of what one may call social mechanisms. (Two sentences before the famous one I quoted, Madison uses ‘device’ to refer to such a project.) Of course, as this hints, it’s quite possible to conceive of this project as leaning on multiple further specializations (in empirical behavioral science, normative theory, in formal and conceptual theorizing, etc.).

One design desideratum that Madison puts on his social mechanisms is that “The the “interest of the [ambitious] man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.” And one way to achieve this is to motivate ambitious men to pursue their interest and, thereby, to have constitutional rights protected. Famously, Madison thought this could only be done if ambitious men were both in charge of securing rights and other men were in charge of preventing these from becoming too powerful: “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” (Madison’s proposed means of doing so are, I trust, familiar.)

As an aside, Kant got into the very same spirit of things in a famous passage from Perpetual Peace (although not especially influential on contemporary Kantians):

The problem of organizing a [constitutional'] state, however hard it may seem, can be solved even for a race of devils, if only they are intelligent. The problem is: "Given a multitude of rational beings requiring universal laws for their preservation, but each of whom is secretly inclined to exempt himself from them, to establish a constitution in such a way that, although their private intentions conflict, they check each other, with the result that their public conduct is the same as if they had no such intentions.”

Here Kant is trying to solve what we might be inclined to call ‘a free-rider problem’ (the secret inclination to exempt himself, etc.) by way of social mechanism that like in Madison’s device ‘'checks’ men who are no angels and is meant to produce good outcomes that are unintended-to-the-agents involved (the race of devils), but intended by the proto-social mechanism designer (the wise legislator). Kant’s race of devils is a much bleaker than Madison’s no angels generalization. While there are many ways to disambiguate the no angels generalization such that it comes out as largely true empirically, I take it that in Kant’s ‘race of devils’ we’re dealing with a kind of methodological device only (apt for proto-mechanism design).

Kant’s emphasis on self-preservation puts one in mind of Hobbes. Hobbes puts it as following, in exploring the relative merits of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy given that our self-preservation is the goal (or the “security and peace’' of the people) then, “where the publique and private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most advanced.” (Leviathan, Chapter 19) Hobbes goes on to argue this is best achieved through a monarchy.

In the material quoted from Kant and Hobbes, we are dealing with very broad social mechanism (namely general constitutional form). These are generally not the kind we have in mind when thinking of proto-mechanism design.

In fact, social mechanisms can range from type of constitution (as in Hobbes), to constitutional structure (in context Madison is describing the independence of different departments or powers of government, and especially the role of the judiciary therein), to a particular social practice (say, ostracism in Athens or banishment more generally). While there is an undeniable theoretical elegance to sticking to same implied models, crucially, it is not required that one holds to the same account of human nature in each case, as Hume notes (when commenting on his own maxim, “in contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controuls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest,” ((1741) “Of the Independency of Parliament”))), “it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact.”

The second project, is not as developed in Madison, but it is manifest in the wider context of the famous sentence:

It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

I read Madison as claiming something like the following, that we need proto-mechanism design, or social mechanism(s), in the type(s) and structures of government is the effect of the same reason or ground why we have government in the first place (viz, that we we humans are no angels). This second project is a kind of rational reconstruction of (and thereby a kind of justification) of the origin government. It offers what I shall henceforth describe as a ‘necessitating rationale for government.’ (In what follows I am going to conflate and use interchangeably ‘polity’/‘the state’/‘government.’)

I put it like that because it is clearly thinner in normative and explanatory ways than, say, a social contract account, and it is thinner than most historical or mythological accounts of the origin or genesis of state. In offering a necessitating rationale for government a compelling consideration in its favor is offered, but no more.

Madison is not unique. One can encounter a very similar necessitating rationale for government in Spinoza.

If human nature were so constituted that men desired most what is most useful, there’d be no need of skill [art] to produce harmony and loyalty. But it’s evident that human nature isn’t at all like that. As a result, it’s been necessary to set up a state, so that everyone—both those who rule and those who are ruled—does what’s for the common wellbeing, whether they want to or not. That is, it’s been necessary to set it up so that everyone is compelled to live according to the prescription of reason, whether of his own accord, or by force, or by necessity.

This happens if the affairs of the state are so arranged that nothing which concerns the common wellbeing is committed absolutely to the good faith of any one person.—Spinoza, Political Treatise 6.3 (Curley’s translation)

Three preliminary points, first, Spinoza is clearly criticizing Hobbes’ apparent conclusion in defense of monarchy from premises Hobbes could grant. In fact, in subsequent material, Spinoza goes on to argue that in monarchies where the publique and private interest are most closely united we are de facto dealing with a kind of aristocracy. In what follows nothing hinges on this. Second, Spinoza clearly allows that some people may well act in the service of the common good without being nudged, but one should not count on it. Third, Spinoza goes on to offer many kinds of social mechanisms in terms that anticipate Hume and Madison (as I have recounted here).

The implicature of Spinoza’s claim that people don’t reliably desire what is most useful is pretty close to Madison’s idea that people are no angels. (And they share a republican concern with the effects of ambition.) But even so it is striking, nevertheless, that for Spinoza if people reliably desired (and acted on) what is merely (say) somewhat useful, a state would be required. Spinoza’s necessitating rationale for government does not require devils or knaves, but could be the product of our (say) epistemic imperfections; we may want to desire what is most useful for ourselves, but it is unlikely that without a state we have epistemic resources to do so. (This idea has a surprising afterlife in Mill and Lippmann.)

Let me come to a close. While Spinoza is not a Benthamite utilitarian, it’s pretty clear that he anticipates Bentham’s idea that the legislator’s task is to effect (to use Halévy’s phrase) the artificial identification of interests. And given that there are more than a few affinities between Spinoza’s moral psychology as mediated by Helvétius (and d’Holbach) and Bentham one can tell a much larger story that situates Spinoza in the advance of modernity. I am not critical of such efforts, only their excesses.

But here I am interested in looking backward. For Spinoza’s necessitating rationale for government in the Political Treatise is also not far removed from the Socratic presupposition lurking in [A]. They both think that even relatively decent people need government. (Spinoza sometimes sounds more Hobbesian, but that’s okay.) In the Ethics this follows from the fact that we are not self-sufficient. According to Spinoza even a ‘free’ man must often accept aid from the ignorant (Ethics4 P70S; see also E34, especially the scholia).

Unfortunately, in immediately context of Book I of the Republic, the Socratic presupposition is not offered as a necessitating rationale for government. Such a rational is explicitly offered, however, in Book 2, at the start of Socrates’ discussion of the ‘true city’ (or the city of pigs):

“The origin of the city, then…is to be found in the fact that we do not severally suffice for our own needs, but each of us lacks many things. Do you think any other principle establishes the state?” (369B)

Shorey’s use of ‘principle’ is very much what I have in mind, but is a bit of an over-interpretation (as I glance at the Greek). But that’s okay because it is a natural gloss on the first quoted sentence.

For Socrates the necessitating rationale for government is, in fact, that we are not self-sufficient. Interestingly enough this generalization about us, that we are not self-sufficient, explains the origin of government and the division of labor for Socrates (as he goes on to say). And his necessitating rationale for government is compatible with people being naturally rather good in Plato’s Socrates.