SİYASAL DÜŞÜNCE - Deneme Sınavı - 9

The members of the Polis, in other words citystate, consist of polites, namely the citizens; and the citizens of the polis consist of free Greek men among which foreigners, women, and slaves are not included.

In Sparta, another political institution was Apella, something similar to the popular assembly. The drafts, prepared by Gerousia were approved by Apella. The members of the Apella were Spartans who were over thirty-years old and they were not allowed to debate about the drafts.

Free population of Athens had four strata: Eupatrides, geomores, demiurgus, and thetes-the nobles, small farmers, craftsmen, and poor peasants, respectively. Both inter-class and intra-class struggles between these groups had led to different types of administrations such as Aristocracy, oligarchy, plutocracy, and democracy. Contrary to the Sparta, political debates and competition were very vivid in Athens and participants were also large in numbers. The reason behind the prosperous philosophical and political tradition of the ancient Greece is demonstrated in association with this background that someway illustrates a form of what we call today as democracy.

Not only the object and the content, but also methods of investigation changed with Sophists. Previously, methodological understanding of philosophers of nature was based on the method of deduction.

According to Socrates,virtue was a form of knowledge and thus something that could be taught to people.

It always should be kept in mind that the Platonic philosophy is based on a non-egalitarian belief.

The scheme presented by Plato portrays a static societal structure. Indeed, he was aware of the fact that ordinary states cannot achieve all these virtues and thus turn into a just organisation.

According to Aristotle, the structure of the being cannot be understood just by considering the external appearance. Rather, internal relations and connections should be revealed and the substance or cause of the being must be comprehended metaphysically.

Contrary to idealist philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, a materialist contribution to social philosophy was important.

Cicero’s main aim was to turn back to old aristocratic days. According to Cicero, public and republic –state- were the same. When people united within a stable order, a need for administration occurred. Society was a result of sense of community and state was a result of political differentiation. State was a unity, in which people were united with a common objective and connected to each other with legal bonds

Ancient Greek civilization is well-known for its specific political, social, economic, and cultural habitat that is known as “polis”. Polis is both the name of a social milieu and its political institution. This in fact underlines an important initial point that political administration is not something detached from the social life. On the contrary, it is an indispensable part of it in ancient Greece.

Sparta was a city on the south of Peloponnesus peninsula and consists of few villages.

Free population of Athens had four strata: Eupatrides, geomores, demiurgus, and thetes – the nobles, small farmers, craftsmen, and poor peasants, respectively (Ağaoğulları, 2011, p.36). Both inter-class and intra-class struggles between these groups had led to different types of administrations such as Aristocracy, oligarchy, plutocracy, and democracy. Perioikos (strata of Sparta)

Finally, there were also some philosophers, such as Democritus and Epicurus, who tried to understand the transformation of the universe and the movement of cosmos. These early investigations only partly aimed to deal with the social life.

Socrates is a philosopher dealing with theoretical issues

Socrates was seeking being a good human (Xenophon)

Socrates was seeking being a good citizen (Xenophon)

Socrates was not interested in dealing with logic (Xenophon)

Socrates was a high-level metaphysician (Plato)

Looking at the successors of Socrates, we can see an important ancient school of political thought that is usually pointed out as one of the oldest versions of egalitarianism: Cynicism. The word cynic, in fact, is from an ancient word used to imply dog. Cynics’ primitive life style was resembled to life of a dog and, therefore, the name of “cynic” was given them by their political opponents. Cynicism was a reactive movement against to the highly non-egalitarian society. The members of the movement were the lowest part of the society who was supported by the foreigners and exiles who were not given a right to citizenship. However, their egalitarian reaction to stratified society was not considerably successful in spreading among the poor. Cynics were a group that pursued happiness and, according to them, only virtuous people could be happy. Socrates was a good example for that. He was living simply and only trying to be virtuous, nothing else.

Plato was from an aristocratic family whose roots were believed to lie down to the God Poseidon. He was a successful Olympic sports player and also a poet. When he met with Socrates, he gave up sports and poem. He devoted his entire career to pursue of a good governance for Greece. But instead of going into politics, in 390 B.C. –when he was thirty-seven-, went to a trip for South Italy and Egypt. He also went to Syracuse based on the invitation of the King. He was the founder of Academia -the first academic institution of Europe-, where he taught his philosophy and political views. The institution was sponsored by some rich friends of Plato himself.

Aristotle classified the governmental types on two dimensions: The first dimension was the rightness and aim of the states. According to this measure, states were classified as being right or wrong. The second dimension was the number of people who possesses the power. There can be only one single person, there can be a minority, or there can be a majority. Thus there occur six different types: The right single person, or minority, or majority regimes and the wrong single person, or minority, or majority regimes. These types can be listed as follows (Coleman, 2000, p. 214):

Epicurus developed his philosophy based on four different sources: Platonic lecturers of Athens, atomist doctrine of Democritus, septic views of Pyrrhus, and hedonist philosophy of Aristippus. Even though he was affected by all these philosophers, he was a strong critic of them. Unfortunately, he taught his ideas like dogmas and his school gained almost a semi-religious character. Thus, while the further contributions were restrained by this feature, the Epicurean philosophy became easy to be studied. Investigating only Epicurus’ personal philosophy is adequate for understanding the general conception of Epicurean school indeed.

Greek political thought linked to Roman politics through Polybius. He was a Greek, educated in Greece and thus tried to explain the Roman institutions and political developments by the conceptions of Greek political thinking.