Of Rule and Office is an original contribution to Platonic scholarship that draws upon (and at times qualifies) the author’s numerous prior publications and lectures. The book analyzes the Laws, Statesman, and Republic (in that order) to argue that Plato was interested in contemporary practices of political accountability that could encourage rulers to use their powers for the good of their subjects. At the same time, however, Plato recognized that the standard accountability measures were insufficient to achieve this end. He therefore concluded that potential rulers also needed extensive education and acculturation under the watchful gaze of an unelected, superordinate body. The book’s many virtues include its philological rigor, its efforts at historical contextualization, its command of political thought, and its conviction that the study of Plato remains relevant today.
The dust jacket features stylized renderings of two golden objects, the first a famous diadem from Bronze Age Mycenae, the second a civic crown resembling those awarded by democratic Athens. Together they symbolize an ideal that Lane claims united Greek culture across time and place, namely that rulers exercise their powers on behalf of the ruled. Despite arguments to the contrary advanced by e.g. Thrasymachus in Republic and Callicles in Gorgias, Plato himself subscribed to this notion (51). Part I (Introduction) describes and justifies Lane’s approach. Part II (Reconfigurations of Rule and Office) argues that the theme of political accountability and ideas about how to improve it unite the Laws, Statesman, and Republic. Part III (Degenerations of Rule and Office) considers the deterioration of political regimes (politeiai) and souls (psuchai) discussed by Plato later in the Republic. Finally, Part IV (Thematizations of Rule and Office) situates his ideas about accountable rule on behalf of the ruled with regard to two types of regime utterly lacking in these regards: tyranny and anarchy. The lengthy acknowledgements, bibliography, and index are complemented by a short glossary of Greek terms; an index locorum is available gratis online.
Lane’s study grows out of her interest in Plato’s vocabulary for rulers and ruling. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Plato avoids the idiom hoi en telei (66), preferring especially the noun arche and the verb archein. When he uses the noun in the singular, its meaning is often ambiguous, denoting either rule in general or (accountable) offices in particular. When he uses it in the plural, however, he almost always means the latter (67). His participles formed from the verb can likewise signify either “rulers” in general or “officeholders” in particular, depending on the context (68). From this initial observation, Lane proceeds to examine Plato’s thoughts on the telos (ultimate end), taxis (specific arrangement of offices), and epitaxis (power to command) of rule. According to her, Plato was acutely aware of the “Juvenal conundrum” (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?) (7), and the Laws, Statesman, and Republic reflect this fact in various ways.
Laws “aspires to make all offices and positions of political power accountable” (8). Its new pan-Cretan polis of Magnesia will employ many of the procedures familiar from classical Greece, such as euthunai, collegial boards, term limits, sortition, and election (55). At the same time, its officeholders will also be supervised by a group Lane renames the Daily Meeting (as opposed to Nocturnal Council) (107). Its members, noteworthy for their excellence, familiarity with the ways of other poleis, and zeal for education, will function as “human embodiments of . . . nous” (109) and “guardians of the spirit of the laws” (111). They will however be unaccountable themselves, with the junior members of the Meeting chosen via a sort of dokimasia conducted solely by the senior ones. By contrast, the Statesman focuses on the figure of the ideal ruler, “who does not hold an ordinary or even a reconfigured office” (117). Although he can issue orders, he is not subject to any of the customary accountability procedures and bound only by “a duty to care” (119 n. 8). His task is to deploy his considerable expertise for the benefit of his subjects. In this regard he resembles a master builder, a smelter of metals, or, above all, a weaver (132). For its part, Republic Books 5-7 proposes an elaborate, age-tiered schema to prevent potential rulers from being corrupted. Its provisions include sorting candidates by nature, educating them thoroughly, preventing them from owning private property, paying them an in-kind wage (191-2), and subjecting them to ongoing scrutiny by unelected, philosophical elders. After passing successfully through this cursus and serving a tour of duty in the Cave, the apprentice rulers graduate to become the “safeguarding” seniors for the next generation (218).
Part III contains a detailed analysis of Republic Books 8-9, arguing that Plato here provides mutually reinforcing yet distinct narratives about how an ideal city might come to decline. According to Lane, “the relationship between individuals and the city in which they live can be analyzed at either of two levels . . . a political-theoretic analysis in which the principles of constitutional change hinge on the nature and quality of rule in the city . . . [and] an individual-theoretic analysis in which the principles of psychological development hinge on the nature and quality of rule in the soul” (260). She views the “macro” (city-level) narrative as driven by the principles of Predominance and Disunity, with the former explaining “coming into being” and the latter “passing away” (265). The “micro” (individual soul) narrative focuses on the “intergenerational (mis)education” (319) that occurs when fathers fail to transmit their values to their sons. For Lane, Plato’s degenerate cities are better characterized by their idiosyncratic educational flaws than their specific constitutional shapes (346).
To reach its conclusions, Of Rule and Office necessarily narrows its focus, acknowledging while sidestepping important questions about the nature of the soul and Plato’s theory of the Good. It also adopts several significant methodological assumptions. For starters, Lane is neither a strict unitarian nor a developmentalist. She instead views the dialogues as offering “an overlapping set of repeated and broadly consistent positions, sometimes expressed through questions or converse denials” (9 n.13). She also considers the Athenian Visitor in Laws, the Eleatic Visitor in Statesman, and Socrates in Republic to be “avatars” (75) of the author. In a provocative analogy, she likens Plato to both the inventor and the player of a video game, someone who creates “varied games within which overlapping sets of questions can be explored in the context of different constraints, different additional characters, different settings, and so on . . . designing the very experiences through which he is able to maneuver via his avatars” (75). And while Lane acknowledges competing, ironic readings of the dialogues (75 n. 86), she thinks the “cities in speech” in Laws and Republic are meant to be “models of good cities . . . [not] antitypes or critiques” (31).
Of Rule and Office is not free from flaws. One is its length. Designed to appeal to disparate groups of readers, the book encourages them to seek out and consult the portions they want, at the cost of considerable repetition of the overall argument. Another drawback is its somewhat uneven tone. Some passages are memorably expressed. For instance, Lane locates her reading of Plato “between two poles, a Scylla in the shape of Karl Popper and a Charybdis in the shape of Adrian Vermeule” (27). At another she aptly borrows a phrase from Facebook to describe the tyrant as both “unfriendable and unfree” (368). And her group noun term a “rump of Ciceros” (287) is a happy coinage. But other passages are unnecessarily jargonistic, “assertorically” “rebarbative” even (30). Too many footnotes express an excessive degree of indebtedness (e.g. 280 n. 57, 285 n. 68). And the contemporary dimension of her inquiry can have unintended resonances. (Published before the fall of Claudine Gay, the book unironically cites the Harvard Corporation as an example of a “self-reproducing” body of “safeguarding” rulers (220 n. 9).) Typos are few and far between, though the reference to “the ancient Geek world” (158) does amuse.
But these are quibbles: this is a book worth reading, and in full. Lane has given us a Plato balanced between “rejectionist” and “immanent critiques” (83) of his own society, someone who thought long and hard about how best to create accountable rulers dedicated to pursuing the good of their subjects. Her emphasis on the enduring stake we all have in such an endeavor seems timely indeed.