Hugh Liebert joins host Rebecca Burgess to discuss statesmanship, from Plutarch to Kissinger.

Brian Smith:

Welcome to Liberty Law Talk. This podcast is a production of the online journal, Law & Liberty, and hosted by our staff. Please visit us at lawliberty.org and thank you for listening.

Rebecca Burgess:

Hello and welcome to Liberty Law Talk. My name is Rebecca Burgess. I’m a contributing editor at Law & Liberty and a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. With Memorial Day upon us and the 50th anniversary of the all-volunteer force this June, now seems as appropriate time as any to talk about military and political leadership via Henry Kissinger’s latest book, appropriately titled, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, and a different work that his title hearkens back to, Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. And because Kissinger, perhaps today’s most recognized American statesman, began his career in public service, so to speak, by serving in the US Army in World War II, who better to join me today in this discussion than Hugh Liebert. Professor of American Politics in the Department of Social Sciences at the US Military Academy. Welcome to the show, Hugh.

Hugh Liebert:

Thanks, Rebecca. Thanks for having me.

Rebecca Burgess:

Great to have you. I thought I would begin this discussion by asking you … Because you also direct West Point’s Graduate Scholarship Program and no doubt have many different talks about character and leadership with future officers. What does Kissinger have to say to these students about the core of leadership, what it is and where we go to find its parts?

Hugh Liebert:

Yeah. That’s a wonderful question. Yeah. I do all of the things you mentioned at West Point and I should probably say upfront that I’m not speaking on behalf of the institution as a whole, but just in my meager capacity as a professor and sharing my personal opinions with you. But it really is a great honor to be able to teach at the US Military Academy because everything we do here in one way or another is connected to leadership. To the development, inspiration, education, training of leaders of character. That’s our mission. But yeah, this book on leadership by Henry Kissinger is a really a remarkable book. A recent book. And it’s a nice launching point for a longer conversation about Plutarch and other treatments of leadership. I think if I were teaching it here, which I haven’t had the opportunity to do yet, we would probably be talking about the character of these people. The book is structured around six statesmen, who he knew during his life and who he studies. He presents their careers to us. He has a wonderful way, I think, of pointing out the ways that a leader sees over the horizon, sees what’s possible, but is also aware of the constraints on what one individual can do. History or circumstances or something outside of our control sets boundaries on our action. And I think that’s a very useful lesson particularly for young, ambitious sorts of people to keep in mind. A dose humility that we can aim so high and there’ll still be some limits to what we can achieve.

Rebecca Burgess:

So how do we prepare or educate statesmen and how do we differentiate between statesmen and great statesmen in Kissinger’s view?

Hugh Liebert:

Yeah. I think the great statesmen in his view are aware of these limits for one thing, but not constrained by the immediate opportunities in front of them. So that’s one thing. As far as how we educate people for this, I’m tempted to say they should read books like Kissinger’s, but also Plutarch’s Lives, which I know is near and dear to your heart as well as mine mean. That’s good advice. I think the traditional advice for how we should educate statesmen in particular is to read histories. To be confronted with practical situations where you have to make a choice and consider the nuances of each individual situation that you’re facing. And I think that’s true. I think reading histories is a very good way to study leadership and prepare for it. But also say since I’ve been teaching here, I’ve become much more aware of the ways that academics in particular, I think tend to overrate studying leadership and preparing for leadership through books. There’s a practical element to it. When you’re leading people, you have to know how people work. Like with other practical endeavors like walking, you learn to walk by trying to walk and failing to walk and improving your performance. You learn to sculpt, I imagine, by trying to sculpt, failing at it and then improving. And I think there’s an element of leadership that’s like that too where you have to practice, fail at what you’re trying to do and then reflect on your failures. And I think it’s there in particular that reading good old books like Plutarch’s, to some degree like Kissinger’s as well can be really helpful

Rebecca Burgess:

In that regard it’s interesting that he doesn’t include Winston Churchill, but I suppose it’s a little hard of a task. At this point there are over … I can’t remember. 2,000 works on Churchill or something like that.

Hugh Liebert:

One of the challenges of talking about leadership is that everyone and their uncle and their second cousin has written a book on leadership so there’s not necessarily a lot new to say. But that’s an interesting thing about the phenomenon is that everyone seems to have an opinion about it and to have some desire. I presume there’s some demand out there in the market for good books on how to be a leader.

Rebecca Burgess:

Right. Maybe we should look at that word leadership too. At what point do we change from the word statesmanship to leadership? Do we lose something by using the word leadership rather than statesmanship?

Hugh Liebert:

Yeah. We definitely do lose something, and I think it means something very different in how we use it. It’s an interesting question for history when that switch happens. I would guess that it has to do with the rise of a number of groups that people consider very significant. They want to be able to think about how to organize them effectively, but they aren’t political groups. So we can talk about leading a business enterprise or leading a religious group or leading a family. All of those are things we want to think about and articulate what good and bad looks like. But leading in politics is something a little bit different from that. So I think that probably the rise in talking about leadership versus statesmanship has something to do with these other domains of life coming into view more prominently than they were before. But it’s also, I think, a useful way of eliminating the phenomenon. Because if you think about what leaders do, I think my favorite definition of leadership that I’ve heard, which I owe to the mayor of my small town that I live in actually … But he’s quoting Eisenhower. He says, “It’s the art of getting people to do willingly what you need them to do.” Or something to that effect. But it’s nice because you see that that’s true in a way. If you have some responsibility for a group, you want to be able to articulate and get people to act in concert towards some common purpose. But there’s always this temptation that individuals have to work in their own interests, which in many respects can go against what the common interest is. And so this ability, which some people seem to have and other people don’t have as much, to get people to link their own self-interest, what they want to do personally, with what’s good for the whole, that’s a really challenging thing. It shows up in a number of walks of life. Very consequentially in politics.

Rebecca Burgess:

Right. Kissinger’s book looks at the post-war period and looks at the six different leaders. Some well-known and lesser known names. Lee Kuan Yew, he talks about and Anwar Sadat, but also Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon, Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer. And his contention seems to be, or one of the interesting things that he seems to be looking at is how leadership happens in moments of transition or leadership is maybe most visible in moments of transition when as he puts it, values and institutions are losing their relevance and the outlines of what a worthy future are in controversy. So then he goes into, at least in his conclusion, that while leadership is in fact not a general thing, not an abstract thing, as you mentioned, it happens in particular places in particular times, there’s also something of enduring value within leadership. Something that carries across. What are some of those things that you noticed in reading the book that he mentions there?

Hugh Liebert:

The enduring qualities of leadership. The things that aren’t particular. Yeah. One thing he points out, which I think is a very valuable insight, is that many of these six leaders he studies have a kind of rhythm almost to their life where they have moments of action and then moments of reflection. Many of them have an experience where they check out for a while. Go to a monastery or some private home and are able to reflect and read and really think. But then have these moments where they’re fully engaged in practice too. And I think that’s a very valuable lesson for leaders to have. To think about the way that this kind of alternation between reflection and practice can be valuable. I’ll say the other thing that I think is really valuable from the way that Kissinger in particular approaches the problem of leadership is that he focuses on statesmen from the 20th century. It’s common, especially for people who are enchanted with the ancients, to think that there was some moment when great leadership was possible, and then everything has declined in some way since those times and here we are stuck. It’s smaller somehow with the opportunities in front of us. But I don’t think that’s true. There’s a permanent possibility for remarkable leadership, even given the constraints that one can be under in a particular time. And Kissinger’s very good for pointing that out. Raising people’s vision that our times aren’t necessarily decadent or fallen in some way.

Rebecca Burgess:

It does remind me of that anecdote from President Bill Clinton after his presidency where he lamented that say, 9/11 didn’t happen under his watch because he didn’t have a great moment to test him, for him to show his leadership. It always makes me wonder … And of course we can talk about this with Plutarch too, is what if you aren’t given the chance to show your great leadership? Do you need a great occasion to show it, or are there qualities that those of us who are not going to become president or perhaps officers in the US Army, that we can do, that we can take away from studies of leadership or reading Kissinger’s book?

Hugh Liebert:

Yeah. No, I think so. I think one thing you could start by saying is that particularly on the political level, it’s possible for statesmen to create their own opportunities to show their excellence. That’s a insight that Machiavelli has that isn’t totally foreign to Plutarch either. I hope we have the chance to talk about one of my favorite of Plutarch’s Lives, which is the life of Phocion. This Athenian statesman when Athens is gradually falling under this way of Macedon. It doesn’t seem like a situation where you could be a great leader. You could really demonstrate an admirable character, your ability to see the possibilities of events. But partly thanks to Plutarch’s guidance, you’re able to see that actually there are opportunities to do remarkable things, even under pretty constrained circumstances. And I think that’s a good lesson. Good character, the ability to inspire other people, all of that should be able to show itself in a variety of contexts. Particularly when we can raise our sight a little bit from the options that seem immediately available and look for opportunities that maybe other people don’t see.

Rebecca Burgess:

Right. Well, one final question about Kissinger’s book. And of course we’re not quite doing it justice, but let’s be frank, we really want to just get to Plutarch and ancient Athens because there’s so much there. What might be missing in Kissinger’s book about leadership? I think I’ll just leave it at that. What might be missing?

Hugh Liebert:

It’s a good question. I really do admire this book, so it’s a little hard for me to say that, but just as a partisan of Plutarch, let me answer that question. Which is to say Kissinger writes six lives that stand alone. They’re independent of one another. Some of the characters know each other, but they aren’t really meant to be interwoven I think in any way apart from that. Plutarch by contrast writes lives of leaders in parallel. So there’s one Greek leader, one Roman leader statesman, and it’s a brilliant literary form that Plutarch is largely responsible for inventing. It’s brilliant precisely for the study of leadership because he manages in the way he structures his literary work to put these leaders in competition with one another and show us the case for one and then the case for the other, and ask us as readers to choose which is the best. There’s something almost, I hesitate to say this, but a little egalitarian about Kissinger’s approach where we’re not asked to make these harsh judgments. And I think engaging the judgment of a reader is not only good for philosophical education, like forcing you to take a stand and own up to your commitments, reflect on them and so on, but also is a good practice for leadership. Because one of the things one has to do, particularly as a statesman but in other walks of life too, is size up other leaders. They get to know people, the range of human types, and there’s something about seeing people in competition with one another, even in a kind of literary form that I think really hones those skills. So Plutarch taps into that in a way Kissinger does not.

Rebecca Burgess:

Right. Well, Kissinger does invoke that classical antiquity is long considered the nursery of statesmen so I feel as though we can just segue right into that nursery, if you will. And of course, while there’s no end to the conversation we could have about today’s ills and where to find our statesmen … Are they there? Is there any there? Sometimes I do think it’s richer to look to fraught moments in history and the failures, as you mentioned, or successes of some of the people in those moments and how they responded to sometimes overwhelming events without the benefit of the internet or PR teams, all the rest of it, mapping out the consequences to all their actions. So if we turn to sixth-century BC, this seems like a really great time to look at Athens and to look at Athens at three distinct moments. So while all of Plutarch’s lives are imminently worthy to be talked about, I think if we focus maybe on Solon in the moment of establishing laws or giving laws to Athens and then Athens at its height with Pericles, and then as you mentioned Phocion, at its decline or end or what to do now, then maybe we can find some of those moments to fasten on and go from there. How does that sound?

Hugh Liebert:

Yeah, sounds great. Let’s do it.

Rebecca Burgess:

Wonderful. Solon. Tell us a little bit about what’s happening in sixth century BC Athens where this character comes to the fore giving them their laws, but Plutarch introduces the life of Solon with a great amount of poetry, and as a person, a poet who also is a lover of beauty, which is very Athenian of course. But his entry into public life, Plutarch points out as beginning in deception and poetry. There is the battle of salamis that Athens has failed to hold onto this island that it’s very attached to. And the Athenians are so distraught at their loss that they actually pass a law that no one can bring up the fact that they don’t have it any longer and no one can mention them returning to war and taking it back. And Solon writes a 100-verse, I think, poem about this and goes around pretending to be a madman singing this in order to convince the Athenians to return. Why does Plutarch tell us about this? What does it mean to start politics via deception in poetry?

Hugh Liebert:

No, that’s a great question. Plutarch has a wonderful way of telling these stories that captured the character of people and really allowing us to understand their character as a kind of lead in to it. And so in Solon’s particular case, Plutarch sets this story up by telling us that he comes from a well-off family, but one that’s pretty poor because of the philanthropy his father has done. So he’s kind of spent down the family fortune in giving it away charitably. So Solon, there’s this law passed restricting freedom of speech about this particular foreign policy issue that has caused a lot of trouble for the Athenians. Solon pretends to be crazy and goes out into the public square to talk about this. So what do the people expect to see? They expect to see the son of this once great family at his moment of greatest shame, embarrassment, and there’s something of a spectacle about it.

But in fact, Solon reads this poem and the reaction of the audience to it is interesting because as we’ll see a little further in life as we talk about it, Athens at the time is divided into these very strong factions, the rich, the poor, these people who live in different geographical regions of the city. Solon’s pretending to be crazy and reading a poem kind of unleashes, discovers a new faction, which is the young. The young, Plutarch says, really respond to the speech, and all of a sudden this opens the door for people to talk about the possibility of trying to take this island, which they weren’t able to talk about before. So here you see a great introduction to the variety of skills that you have to engage in to be a statesman. I mean, maybe some poetry helps, but certainly being able to set the scene, to be theatrical, to know how human emotions work, what kind of emotions will be going on in a scene, and how they can foster the persuasion in the end. I think Solon recognizes all of these and puts together a wonderful scene that achieves what he wants to do and really inserts himself in public life for the first time because of this dramatic thing that he sets up.

Rebecca Burgess:

Right. Later on in the synchresis, the comparison at the end, Plutarch writes that the conduct of a wise politician is ever suited to the present posture of affairs, and often by foregoing apart, he saves the whole and by yielding in a small matter secures the greater. So you could say that he yields a part of his reputation in order to launch a political career.

Hugh Liebert:

That’s right. Yeah.

Rebecca Burgess:

But also, I mean the times. So let’s talk about Athens at the point and how he comes to write the code of laws for them. There is the factionalism, which you mentioned. There’s also extreme economic inequality with farmers, actually as farmers throughout history want to happen or to do, is they’re not really successful and in order to pay their debts, they’re selling themselves often into either serfdom or slavery. And the many are angry, you can say, and perhaps fomenting for revolution or tyranny for someone to come in and save the situation. And the wealthy, of course, are not in favor of either of that, of themselves continuing in this posture of affairs. But it’s not really sustainable. So what does Solon do? How does he manage these factions through his code of laws and what is the substance of his laws?

Hugh Liebert:

Yeah. Well, I think one way to start in how Plutarch seems to present this case is that first of all, Solon is trusted by all sides. That’s a remarkable thing. I mean, partly it’s because he’s a bit of a war hero after Salamis goes well, but it’s also partly that he’s kind of known to the rich and known to the poor. They each have their hopes in him for different reasons. He doesn’t belong to either faction really. So the rich seem to think that he’s going to basically enforce all their contracts and keep the poor indebted. The poor seem to think that he’s going to be a real revolutionary and abolish all property or establish a kind of equality of property. Plutarch tells us that they each know that he’s for equality, but they understand different things by it. And he comes up with something like a middle path. And I think his key insight is that he sees that underneath this economic issue, although the economics of it are very real, there’s also this question about status or respect. The thing that’s going wrong in the city is that these citizens are being enslaved because of their debts, and the rich, on the other hand, are thinking of themselves as masters. Not only as rich people who have more money than their fellow citizens, but really as masters and the other people as slaves. So Solon finds a way by canceling the debts, that’s how it’s presented to us, of both recognizing, honoring the inequality, allowing something for the rich, not all property is made completely equal, but at the same time recognizing the claim that the poor make too, which is that no matter how indebted and poor we are, we’re still human beings, citizens in some respect and deserve some kind of dignity, some recognition of our dignity despite the bad economic situation we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Rebecca Burgess:

So before Solon’s laws, they had Draco’s code, so that’s where our word Draconian comes from. They were supposedly so severe that they were said to be written in blood, not in ink, which that’s a little frightening. And Plutarch comments that what Solon does in addition to taking this middle road, is really humanizing the law and kind of understanding where the people are at. How does he humanize it, I guess I would say? How does one humanize the law?

Hugh Liebert:

Well, it’s beautiful how Plutarch presents this. He shows us a way of life emerging from a series of laws. So he gives us a wide variety of laws that Solon establishes, but all of them seem directed at a way of life that’s open to commerce, let’s say, not only to serving in the army or being a citizen or whatever as the highest way, but open to other ways of life too. He doesn’t, as we’ve discussed, allow for extreme forms of penalty flowing from economic situations so debt slavery will be eliminated. And he has a number of other ways I think, of softening the laws, of allowing there to be certain forms of forgiveness and reconciliation. Not only the really harsh punishments of the laws that precede him.

Rebecca Burgess:

I think it’s interesting, going back to that question of beauty that Plutarch essentially brings up at the very beginning, that Plutarch also goes into a discussion about how beautiful things can also be useful things. And it’s in that context that he talks about Solon’s encouragement of the trades, and that that was a way that could also increase their prosperity, especially merchants, especially exploring further the sea. And of course, the sea will become such an important part of Athens with Pericles and onwards. But I thought that was an interesting note added to the Athenian story. That it’s not just about finding honor and beauty in the traditional arts and culture, but that commerce really does add the layer underneath it that enables those things too to happen.

Hugh Liebert:

I think that’s right. And there’s an element of philosophy in that too. I mean, Solon will travel around the world at a pivotal point in his life in order to learn things, but also to get away so that all of these things in the Athenian case somehow go together. There’s traveling for learning, there’s traveling for business, and there’s traveling to master how to steer a ship, which is very useful in war. So there’s overlap. Multi-use sorts of things. Rebecca, before we move on from law entirely, I just wanted to mention my favorite illustration of Solon’s approach to law giving, which has a little bit to do, I think with the gentleness of his laws relative to Draco’s, which is Plutarch gives us an anecdote about Solon’s encounter with another wise man, these seven Greek wise men, Anacharsis. And Anacharsis tells Solon that laws are like spider’s webs. They’re very good at constraining weak, timorous people maybe, but for the strong, they don’t matter. He just brushed them aside for people who aren’t scared. And that’s a very famous quotation. It’s one that shows up actually a lot in the American founding documents when they’re talking about some of the ways that law can be like misconceived if you get it wrong. It’s kind of like a spider’s web. Solon says to Anacharsis, “No, that’s not true.” This is a kind of legal, realist position that it’s just power at the bottom. The laws don’t really matter. “That’s not right,” Solon says. Because he thinks it’s possible for law to articulate the overlap of interests, is the way he puts it, so that if you get a law right, everyone has a certain stake in upholding the law, they see their own self-interest in it, and then that law will be stable. So it’s a very interesting approach to law, actually. It’s not necessarily the most intuitive, but it’s one that, I think, arises in the way that Plutarch tells the story from some of Solon’s commercial interests. He seems to see that there’s a deal to be made when there are interests that overlap, and that’s how you should think of law too. And then it can be enduring. If it discovers that space, that zone of agreement, then laws can be secure.

Rebecca Burgess:

Well, it certainly makes sense that the founders would like that anecdote and quote it often because the question of course in a democracy is how do you get the ambitious, the great men as well as the hoi polloi to adhere to the law, to love them and not to break them. Of course, Lincoln then comes up later with civic education, but it really is very much about not just education, but a love that gets fostered, I would say.

Hugh Liebert:

No, I think that’s right, and I think that’s, in fact, one of the lessons that Solon discovers as the story unfolds is that it turns out that once he gives the laws, and as long as he’s still in town, people are always asking him, “What does the law mean? What are we to do?” Because they want a ruler. They don’t just want law. Law is a very interesting thing where it’s a rule that doesn’t interpret itself, and it doesn’t have a sword to enforce it. It doesn’t control the money, in and of itself as law. It depends on actual people to do those things. So as long as Solon, the lawgiver, is there, the people would prefer a ruler to a lawgiver, which is a deep critique of law, in fact. It’s one that Plato and Aristotle make too, that it’s much better to have a wise ruler who can make the right call in the exceptional cases than it is to have a law that has a generality to it and can’t spot the exceptions as easily anyway. But this hassle of everyone asking what the laws mean forces Solon to get out of there, to go on a nice study abroad trip. The defense of it that Plutarch gives us is that he’s going to allow the people to live under the laws for a while and realize living under the laws as laws, not as rules given by someone you can talk to, that they’re advantageous for them. So I think he sees over the course of the life that the laws need to educate, not only to identify the overlap of interests.

Rebecca Burgess:

I wanted to talk about that extended 10-year excursion that Solon then makes. And I think it’s interesting also when Plutarch sets up that, he mentions that it wasn’t just an annoyance, but a deep problem, as you were mentioning. Since Solon was the lawgiver, they wanted him to change the law continually, to amend it. And it raises this super interesting question that we see again and again throughout literature and history, which is the lawgiver can never stay in his own country, it seems like. Moses of course can’t enter Israel, the promised land. Am I misremembering that Machiavelli makes a great big point of the lawgiver and needing to leave?

Hugh Liebert:

I think it might be something Machiavelli learns from Plutarch because Plutarch certainly makes that point. I would say the exception to that might be the American case. Our lawgivers stick around for a while and rule under the system of law. But that’s in a way a great paradox. And it’s that paradox I think that makes something like Washington stepping down from the presidency after two terms just such a remarkable act of virtue. Is that it’s very natural in a way for the founder or the lawgiver to stick around and rule as a king. And it takes some real insight or virtue or something not to do that.

Rebecca Burgess:

So he leaves, he goes traveling in Egypt and Cyprus for 10 years. Meets Croesus, however one says that name. The very wealthy man. And teaches him some lessons about happiness. It’s not in riches alone. That in a sense you can never be happy until your life is over, which seems kind of dark, but also kind of true. And then he returns, and when Solon comes back to Athens, Athens is once again rife with factionalism. And this time it seems like it’s a regional factionalism almost. And then there’s this very large problem that happens, which is his friend or friendly acquaintance, Pisistratus, is clearly fomenting to be a tyrant. So can Solon avert that danger of the tyrant arising and must he as the one who gave the laws?

Hugh Liebert:

So friend, maybe more than that. They seem romantically involved at one point in the lives. But in any event, someone that Solon is very close to, Pisistratus, this tyrant. Solon opposes him. He says that you should live under the laws which are, broadly speaking, democratic with elements of oligarchy, more oligarch institutions like the Areopagus thrown in. But broadly democratic. “You should live under these laws. These are the best laws for you. Resist this tyrant,” says Solon. But the Athenians don’t, and Pisistratus ends up ruling. Now, Solon has options other than just hectoring the Athenians and letting his friend become a tyrant. He could rule himself. But he doesn’t want to. He says to the people who ask him to rule that tyranny or one-man rule right outside of the law is a lovely place to be, but you can’t step down from it. Once you do it, that’s all you’re going to do. So he decides not to rule. He goes into a kind of advisory role and a private life really, and lets Pisistratus become tyrant. But it’s a very paradoxical thing, and I think Plutarch tells the story with real nuance. Pisistratus, first of all, it’s not clear that he’s a tyrant in the way we picture tyrants of killing people left and right and having a fancy palace and all of that stuff. That doesn’t seem to be his style of rule. Thucydides also tells us that in book six of the Peloponnesian War, that the Athenians kind of misremember this, that he actually wasn’t all that bad. Some of his successors might have been. So that’s one thing is that he’s not a nasty tyrant. The second thing is that he enforces a lot of Solon’s laws. So Plutarch raises this possibility that maybe the Athenians at this point in their development, their education, or some of that, they aren’t ready to just live under the laws as laws. They actually need someone to enforce them in the manner that a king or a tyrant could do.

Rebecca Burgess:

That is a very interesting point, and it shows that interaction once again between needing a ruler and needing law and how those two work together. And at one point, Plutarch tells us as this situation is happening, that Solon goes into the marketplace and does give a speech to the Athenians, in which, as Plutarch says, he spoke that memorable saying that before it was an easier task to stop the rising tyranny, but now the great and more glorious action to destroy it when it was begun already and had fathered strength. Which almost seems to suggest that … Well, that he’s encouraging a revolution almost against the tyrant. Which is, I think one of these enduring questions and something that Americans lately have been asking quite a bit is at what point does the statesman or the true statesman go with the flow as being the advisor, you could say, to Pisistratus, or having to make the stand and say, “No, this is inherently wrong. We’ll never be a part of your administration.” That type of a thing.

Hugh Liebert:

No, it’s a wonderful question. And to what extent is Solon correct actually that killing a tyrant would be the proper founding for the Republic? I mean, after all, it is the killing of Pisistratus’ successors, Cleisthenes. And it will establish the Athenian democracy in a secure way that’s going to endure for a long time. Solon’s partner in the pair of lives is Publicola, who is very closely involved in killing the Roman tyrants at the beginning of the Roman Republic. We don’t quite kill King George, but there’s something kind of comparable in the American case. So it might be the case that Solon is right that tyrannicide is not just an option, it’s somehow important to mark this new regime, this new beginning. But then he goes along and advises Pisistratus. I think it’s an interesting ethical question. It’s one that a lot of Plutarch’s contemporaries wrestle with. We didn’t talk too much about Plutarch’s own context, but just real quick, he lives from about 45 to 120 of our era. So under the Roman emperors, many of whom are nasty tyrants, a lot worse than Pisistratus.

Rebecca Burgess:

Nero.

Hugh Liebert:

Right. Nero, and some other really bad guys. So he’s a rough contemporary with Tacitus. Tacitus writes with great eloquence about this problem that good people have. On the one hand, if you advise a nasty tyrant, you might be able to make them less nasty, might be able to improve things. Particularly if you’re not just a simple flatterer but can actually speak some truth to power. On the other hand, you get kind of compromised, complicit in that. You have to make some concessions that maybe a good person should make. So I think it’s a very challenging ethical question. Solon for his part seems to decide that he’s going to be an advisor. That the character Pisistratus, he knows well enough to know that he can trust him, can advise him, and that will have good effect. I will say though, that it’s important, I think in the way Plutarch describes this, that isn’t the only thing that Solon does. So he’s not a full-time advisor. He’s a part-time philosopher and a part-time other stuff too. But Plutarch mentions in particular that Solon starts to work on the literary work about Atlantis, about this ideal regime and organizing some of this we have about it.

Rebecca Burgess:

I’m glad that you mentioned that. So Plutarch ends the life of Solon by reverting back to poetry, to Solon writing poetry, and to this lost or never finished … Which is interesting. So Atlantis itself is this imaginary or lost place, and his own work about it is unfinished. Is that a larger commentary on the perfect system of laws not being possible or are we supposed to make something of that?

Hugh Liebert:

I don’t know. I’ve gone back and forth about how to understand that last bit. I mean, one thing you can say is that he connects it to Plato. Plutarch connects this effort to write the story of Atlantis to Plato, because Plato also in a incomplete dialogue tries to tell us the story of Atlantis, and Plutarch makes that explicit. So there’s a certain way in which the tradition of philosophy in Athens picks up with Solon doing this, or at least Plutarch wants to connect it that way. It’s unfinished. I mean, I think you can see Solon engaging in this as a way to pass the time pleasurably. He seems to enjoy working on this sort of thing. He points to the fact that at Athens in particular, the fact that there are ways of life apart from the political way of life that are pleasant, maybe even choice worthy to the political way of life that’s going to be on offer in the city. He also might be involved in doing some of the educational work that he seems to understand by the end of his life is necessary for people to live well under laws. Solon educates a few times in this life. I mean, we’ve mentioned a few of his poems. The story we haven’t told, which is a famous story from Herodotus is when he is talking to this very rich tyrant, Croesus. And Croesus asked him, “Who’s the happiest guy in the world?” Fully expecting him to say, “You are, Croesus.” And Solon says, “No. It’s this guy, Tellus.” Who was a moderately wealthy guy, died on the battlefield after living a good life. And then Cleobis and Biton who died at the right time and so on. And he gives these as examples like stories almost in the manner that Plutarch does to educate people. And he totally fails at the education because Croesus says, “Whatever. Get out of here.” But it’s only later when Croesus is going through the actual experience of having been conquered by the Persians that Croesus realizes the meaning of those stories. So in a certain way, his education, I think was incomplete through just the books. He actually had to live through it. And I imagine Solon at the end of his life … I have no idea whether Plutarch intends this or not, but it’s the way I like to read it, of leaving a kind of education both through the laws, but through these literary works too, the meaning of which will become to clear to the Athenians as they live with the laws and live politically and try to make sense of their experience with what Solon’s left behind.

Rebecca Burgess:

That’s a very thoughtful answer. Thank you for that. But it does lead me to bring in for our consideration the life of Pericles.

Hugh Liebert:

Sure, yeah.

Rebecca Burgess:

If we’re talking about images presented through words, then we naturally have to talk about the images presented for education and the education and ruling a city, which is how I approach anyway, the life of Pericles. It’s very much to me about what types of images are the appropriate images to rule a people and whether Pericles himself, who is famous for being the most moderate and the most uncorrupt statesman while holding the greatest power, is actually the model or the right image of statesmanship, considering that at the end, after he’s gone, the Athenian people revert to disaster. Yeah. So what are we to make of the introduction to Pericles? Maybe that is a good place to start since it is exactly about this question of images and action.

Hugh Liebert:

Okay. Yeah, great. So Plutarch introduces the Pericles. He has a number of famous introductions in his lives. There’s the introduction to Alexander where he looks for the signs of soul, not the great battles. There are a lot of great introductions where he thinks about what he’s doing, Plutarch is doing, when he’s writing his lives. But the introduction of the Pericles and Fabius is one of these where he says that we have this natural capacity in us to love and admire, we human beings do. And he starts by making fun of people who love their pets too much. So like fur mamas is what they’re called. I’ve heard that term. I don’t know if anyone actually uses that, but it’s on bumper stickers. But people who really love their animals. Plutarch says they take this capacity for … And just to be clear, this Plutarch’s position, not my own. We have lots of pets that we love deeply. But he says they have this capacity in their soul and they misdirect it. It should be directed towards humans. They direct it towards animals. “In a similar way,” says Plutarch, “we have the capacity to direct this capacity to love and admire towards acts of virtue, towards really remarkable, virtuous human beings.” And he says, Plutarch does, that when we see a virtuous act, even when we hear one described, we’re filled with the desire to be the sort of person who does virtuous acts. That when we see a statue, we don’t necessarily want to be the person who made the statue or whatever, but when we see a virtuous act, it’s different. We want to be the person who does virtue. And he uses that as the introduction of the Pericles and the Fabius. Suggesting to us that here it’s going to show us some really remarkable virtuous acts that inspire everyone around them to be virtuous. But the problem, as you pointed out, I think you’re exactly right, is that despite Plutarch’s introduction, Pericles’ virtue does not have that effect on everyone who watches him. I mean, he’s able to stay in charge for a while, but it’s not like everyone just kind of admires him and is inspired to be virtuous. In fact, quite the contrary. The life is full of people resisting the rule of Pericles. And Pericles has very clever machinations in order to stay in power. Plutarch gives us these quotations from comic poetry written during Pericles’ life that serve as a kind of mocking chorus during the life. All sorts of people just making fun of Pericles for everything from bad calls as a ruler to his pointy head. He has a head that’s pointy. But we know all this because not everyone who sees Pericles is inspired by him. A lot of them have the opposite reaction. So that really complicates in a nice way, this introduction that Plutarch gives us to this Pericles.

Rebecca Burgess:

Right. So one of the commentators that I’ve read recently about the Pericles points out to me, I thought very interesting purpose that Plutarch is also getting at a little bit more historical for a moment with the life of Pericles, which is that there was Thucydides already and there’s his famous Pericles and there’s Herodotus, but there’s no major historian of the Greek period between those two. And that clearly, throughout the life, it’s very obvious that Plutarch admires many, many things about Pericles. And if you don’t read it closely, all you get is the praise, I think, even while you notice why does he include all of these comic poets and all of these criticisms of Pericles. And this commentator was pointing out that one, Plutarch is interested in the truth, and the truth always lies somewhere between the extremes. But it’s also to take into account those criticisms and how once again to the images, people, statesmen acts are viewed by multiple different viewpoints, if you will. And so maybe here’s a good point to introduce the question of rhetoric and Pericles own education and how he came into power. How did Pericles come into power?

Hugh Liebert:

Through the military actually, because he’s scared of the Athenian people. That’s how Plutarch sets it up. So he himself is very well-born, he comes from an illustrious family. He realizes that things are tending in a kind of democratic direction in Athens. And he’s very scared that they’re going to be against him, partly because of his family background, but also because of that pointy head I mentioned. He looks a lot like Pisistratus. Like this tyrant. So he’s really worried that everyone’s going to kill him because he’s a tyrant. Because he resembles him. Which also shows you the low opinion that he has of the Athenian people when he starts out that they’re the kind of group that might kill someone just because they look like a tyrant, even without having done a lot of tyrannical stuff. So anyway, his first approach though was to serve as a general and not a particularly political or rhetorically inclined general, but more of a military person. And works his way into politics. Plutarch says, and this is a really interesting interpretation, which is a little different than Thucydides, but as you were saying, we have these different accounts that Plutarch is wrestling with. And one account says Pericles is a demagogue. A leader of the people. Full stop. The other says he’s basically a philosopher king type. Like the wisest, most virtuous person who rules essentially as a monarch, even though nominally it’s a democracy. And Plutarch says, “How do we put those two things together? Well, I’ll tell you how he put them together. He was a demagogue before he was an aristocrat.” But the story he says is, so Pericles starts with this kind of military career. He recognizes that this spot of leader of the people, so demagogue literally, is open. There are plenty of good statesmen on the aristocratic side, not so many on the democratic side. And so he’s going to make himself into a leader of the demos, of the people. And he does. He changes his whole way of life so that he’s more popularly inclined. He builds up authority with the people. He acquires significant power and pursues an extremely … I don’t know if populist is the right word, but let’s say policy agenda that’s oriented towards the interest of the people and not the interests of the elites and the aristocrats.

Rebecca Burgess:

Plutarch seems to mention anyway, Pericles looks to cement his power by getting the people behind him and through that means to get into essentially leading the Athenian state. And I think one interesting question, which leading us a little far, is whether he’s doing that because he already sees that an Athenian empire more or less is the way to preserve Athens and whether his entry into politics is because he already had this vision, or does he just simply want to be in power?

Hugh Liebert:

It’s such a good question and it’s such a remarkable thing of this life that it doesn’t seem to me anyway that Plutarch comes down very decisively on one side of those questions. So the question is basically, look, is this Pericles acting out of self-interest? He’s interested in ruling and he’s going to do what it takes to rule. Or does he have some noble vision of what Athens can be that he’s pursuing because of the goodness of the vision? The two are really closely bound up in his life. So just to give you one example, in the first part of his career, in Plutarch’s telling of it, where he’s more of a demagogue, he’s pursuing imperial aims. He’s also building these beautiful buildings. All the temples and these great buildings that Plutarch says now when he’s writing in the first and early second century, Plutarch says, this is the only material evidence we have that Greece was really great once is the buildings that Pericles built. But Plutarch presents those to us not as expressing Pericles’ inherent view of the nobility of Athens and the propriety of it ruling over other cities. Nor is the inherent love of beauty that he wants to pursue for its own sake. It’s basically, both of them are jobs programs in the way that Plutarch articulates it. So he says if he has a big navy that’s out there conquering things, you’re paying a lot of people to row the ships. And that’s really great because that puts a lot of money in the pockets of the people. Similarly with buildings, you need a lot of workers. And so you put a lot of money in the pockets of the people if you do that. And Plutarch even says to us that Pericles did this because the aristocratic statesmen he was up against had massive fortunes that they could spend in public works and all those. And Pericles didn’t have those massive fortunes himself, even though he came from a good family. So he just decided to spend taxpayer money, or in this case, the tribute that came in from the empire cities. So he builds this massive war machine and beauty machine that’s at the same time a kind of Tammany Hall-like works program. And it all meshes together. So the beauty, the empire, Pericles in charge of the whole operation, the democratic politics, it’s a beautiful elaborate construction. Is it for the sake of nobility or for the sake of Pericles’s advantage? Really hard to tell. I’m not sure that Plutarch really comes down one way or the other on it.

Rebecca Burgess:

Yeah, I think he subtly is critiquing it, but at the same time, he is praising it. He sees the benefit, the political benefit to Athens, as you noted. He does make that comment at the end. “These still endure and they still remind us of the power that Greece was.” And of course, because he ends on that note of images and he started on the note of images, it’s like, well, so the Athenian Empire, did it actually endure or did it not? You could say of Athens. But maybe we should … And I realize we’re running out of time, but there’s so much to talk about. But what I wanted to touch on Pericles’ education, which seems to be a really important theme throughout the life that Plutarch is showing us, I think in part why Pericles was so successful. Because he mentions these philosophers that Pericles studied with. But he also has this really interesting anecdote about Anaxagoras and a horned ram’s head. I wonder if you could give us that anecdote and what we’re supposed to make of the different interpretations of that horned ram’s head.

Hugh Liebert:

Right. So as you said, Pericles is educated by philosophers. So this is going to be a persistent, not only in the Athenian lives, but particularly in the Athenian lives, the ways that philosophy and politics can interact. So we’ve seen a little bit of it in Solon already, and we talked about that. In Pericles’ life, it shows up as an education for statesmen. Philosophy can be an education for statesmen. So Pericles takes up with Anaxagoras, a pre-Socratic philosopher, has this theory that all of nature is ruled by mind. And Plutarch tells us that this had a really remarkable effect on Pericles, where it gave a kind of weight, a kind of gravity and seriousness to his rhetoric that allowed him to really speak in a way that was different from how other people spoke and had a kind of insight and depth to it that other people’s speeches didn’t have. So this is one effect. It seems to be good for rhetoric, even though it wasn’t explicitly a rhetorical education. I mean, he had that too, but it has this effect on the way he communicates with other people. But the other effect this philosophical education has, Plutarch says, is that it liberates Pericles from some of the superstitions of his day. So there’s this famous story that we get from this life of the soldiers who worried about an eclipse being an omen from the gods, that something’s going to go wrong. Pericles holds up his cloak in front of the person’s face and says, “Is this an omen from the gods? No, it’s the same thing.” And so he has this kind of deflationary approach to him. And so thinking about this effect that philosophy can have, freeing you from some superstitions, is one of the ways that Plutarch sets up this particular story about the ram. With a single horn, kind of a unicorn ram. He gives us two explanations. One, he shows us Anaxagoras dissecting basically, and showing the material causes of this thing to show that there’s something really special about it. It’s just a particular deformity or whatever of a skull. And the other, this seer who says, “No, actually it’s a sign. It’s important of something that’s going to happen.” Of one-man rule in the city or something like that. And Plutarch intervenes at this point, as he does sometimes in these lives. He selects these stories and sometimes tells us how we should think about them and start interpreting them. And he says “They’re both right. They’re both right.” One of them is pointing out the material cause. I mean he doesn’t use those exact words, but basically that’s the gist of it. And the other is pointing out the final cause. It’s the thing that the matter is pointing towards. And that both of those things can be true simultaneously, so that even things that have a material explanation can also have this broader explanation that has something to do with the gods. Now interestingly, Pericles might miss that. So if Plutarch in interpreting this story suggests to us that there might be some way in which on his own authority, Plutarch is telling us the Pericles might be a little too attuned to the natural causes and not attuned enough to the final causes.

Rebecca Burgess:

That’s interesting. So while acknowledging all that, I read it also a little differently, which is in looking at Lampon and what he does, it’s to me, showing how you can use images in public life to sway, or that people … And this is a Machiavellian point. Wow. We’re really bringing in Machiavelli quite often. Which is that people, the demos don’t understand causes of things. They see an image, and they respond to the image of things. And so knowing how to use those images that the people see is one of the most important qualities of a statesman. And that Pericles does in fact pick up on needing to understand the natural causes or what is the point or the purpose of something, but also how you showcase it to the people in order to arrive at his desired end. And that, to me, this is how then Plutarch gets into the discussion about rhetoric and how Pericles was so powerful or successful in his rhetoric. He even uses the image that he was a master of the … What was it? The hopes and fears of the Athenian people. And then of course, and I was looking for this quote, he says, “Rhetoric or the art of speaking is in Plato’s language, the government of the souls of men and that her chief business is to address the affections and passions, which are, as it were, the strings and keys to the soul and require skillful and careful touch to be played on.”

Hugh Liebert:

Yeah, it’s beautiful. Yeah. I like that very much. Can I ask you a question though about it?

Rebecca Burgess:

Yes.

Hugh Liebert:

Switch the tables a little bit. So how do you understand Pericles’ attitude towards the gods then? Does he understand how to respect the pieties of the Athenians in a way that Plutarch endorses, do you think? Or is he not sufficiently respectful of them? Which just to anticipate a little bit, I think the latter is my position, but I’m curious if it’s yours too.

Rebecca Burgess:

I think I probably agree there as well. It’s interesting that he doesn’t talk more about Pericles’ attitudes towards the gods, given that underneath this life is the Pericles of Thucydides, in which famously he disrespect the gods. I think he does though make this curious little note at one point that Pericles would say a little prayer to the gods before he did his public speaking. So that seems to invoke that Pericles himself may have had a … I don’t know. A slight piety or superstition about that.

Hugh Liebert:

No, it’s a good point. Yeah, I think that’s right. And I guess the passage that comes to mind right away though, in terms of a way that Pericles might go wrong in this respect, on the one hand you could say he’s building temples and they’re beautiful temples. So there’s a way in which he’s both reflecting the shared piety of everyone there and combining that with the appreciation of beauty and the construction of these things. And then all these other kind of ulterior motives, the political stuff of giving people a job. But one of the things he gets really gets in lot of trouble for is that his sculptor buddy, Fidius, puts his face, Pericles’ face, and some of their friends on some of the statues that are supposed to be of these mythical, revered figures and you shouldn’t do self-portrait of you and your buddies on those things. And that creates a bit of a scandal for him. Now I read that as someone who’s a proper statesman and should be in some measure, I think in Plutarch’s judgment, pious himself, but also respectful of the pieties of others, would not make that kind of mistake. He’s hanging out with a fast and loose crowd and that gets him in trouble. All these philosophers and artists. What do you think about that?

Rebecca Burgess:

I would agree, and I think that goes back to the larger question of Plutarch’s quiet criticism of Pericles, is that while he himself seems to understand virtue, the question though is whether it was a show. Even for Pericles himself. Of course Plutarch is in an early modern where he’s showing us the inner workings of character like Shakespeare does later. But he does show, at least in some cases, people reflecting on their virtue or how it really was an integral part of them. And with Pericles, it really does seem an external thing always. And to me, that is one of his criticisms, which goes into why he doesn’t succeed in convincing the Athenian people to adopt his way of life and it all falls apart after him. But that’s my-

Hugh Liebert:

That’s really nicely put. And it’s only towards the end of his life I think that he’s capable of being genuine, of opening up about some of his … In public. So when he loses his children, his legitimate children, in the plague, he then goes to the Athenian people and asks them to cancel a law that he himself passed saying children … In fact, it was during his demagogue period that he passed this. The children born of an Athenian citizen and a foreigner are not Athenian citizens. Which Plutarch tells us, and I don’t think this is the detail in Thucydides. I’m not sure what his source is, but he tells us this essentially removes citizenship from about a quarter of the Athenian population. And all those would’ve been on the aristocratic side, or most of them anyway with these international connections and then all of that. Which is a remarkable thing to disenfranchise that many people. But any event, Pericles did this. At the end of his life, has no heirs to pass anything down to, which seems to evoke this broader theme that you’ve already mentioned of the succession problems that Pericles has. But he goes to the Athenians and says, “Please give me an exception on this law.” And they do. This is a moment of real drama, of genuine feeling, I think in his life where he’s not putting up a facade for the people.

Rebecca Burgess:

I think Plutarch even mentions he had tears in his eyes and the only other time he had tears in his eyes was about Aspasia.

Hugh Liebert:

That’s right.

Rebecca Burgess:

And I wish we had time to talk more about Aspasia and her role. Maybe we just need to do a series on Plutarch.

Hugh Liebert:

Just do whole discussion of Aspasia.

Rebecca Burgess:

But we do need to turn to Phocion here. Pericles was at the height, if you will, and of course there’s many things he did to expand the franchise. As you mentioned, the navy, introducing the common people into the service through the navy. There are connections there with expanding democracy within Athens as you mentioned. So fast-forward a little bit to the end of the Peloponnesian War, even afterwards on the rise of Alexander Philip. And so Macedon is basically thundering forth its trumpets about its power, and Athens is in once again an internal kind of turmoil and also having to deal with this external threat. And that’s the situation in which we find this character who seems a very Socratic or a Socrates-like character. Tell us about Phocion.

Hugh Liebert:

Yeah. I’m not sure it’s Plutarch’s most famous life. In fact, one of the things I really love about it is it’s the neighbor of probably his most famous life. I mean, there’s some debate about that. But Phocion is paired with Cato the Younger. And Cato the Younger, the great hero of the old Roman virtues as the regime is falling apart. We have these beautiful scenes from that life. And everyone loves Cato the Younger. From Montaigne onward. Rousseau. But his pair is Phocion, who’s a considerably less famous and illustrious character, Phocion is. Because he’s the statesman who’s kind of presiding over Athens as it falls under the domination of Macedon. That’s his thing. And his position on that situation, the political situation of Macedon rising in the north, what should Athens do, his position on that is basically you should appease Macedon. And it’s remarkable that Plutarch writes a life of the great appeaser and makes him into heroic figure. It’s a little bit as if you had to choose between Churchill and Neville Chamberlain. And you said, you know what, we should really admire Neville Chamberlain. He’s the great statesman in this scenario. Pluto writes a life of the Churchill equivalent too in Demosthenes, but he has just as much praise, I think probably even more, for Phocion, who wants to make Athens peace with Macedon and kind of live and fight another day. At one point in Phocion’s life, he says, “Our ancestors have sometimes been in charge, sometimes they’ve been ruling, and other times they haven’t been in charge. They’ve been ruled. But by accepting the moments in their history where they had to be ruled, they’ve preserved the city and gone on to great things later and that should be our policy now.” So that’s basically, I think the role he plays is, what do you do when your city is in decline? And Phocion chose this one way to cope with that situation. It’s not intuitively to me or I think to us the most noble and heroic way to cope with that situation. But it’s one that Plutarch, because of the beautiful way he constructs this life, makes available for admiration.

Rebecca Burgess:

An interesting side note that Professor Leo Paul De Alvarez pointed out to me once was that in the life of Alexander, Phocion never shows up and in all the other lives talking about the same situations he never shows up. Which Leo Paul De Alvarez thought in a sense, is this character made up? Now, of course, historically there is evidence he existed. But De Alvarez’s point was, was this Plutarch’s way of putting Socrates in front of Alexander the Great and questioning and showing, in a sense, how to be a moderate conqueror almost. Because as you know, Phocion is recognizing that they’re not going to be able to prevail against Philip or Alexander so the next best thing is to how to make the conditions as favorable to Athens as possible. How do you do that? But then also the bigger question of if Phocion is a Socrates figure, famously at the end he’s given poison, has to kill himself, has to pay for his own poison even.

Hugh Liebert:

So corrupt. You have to bribe the guy to poison you. That’s how corrupt Athens is.

Rebecca Burgess:

But the life as a whole is this question about what does statesmanship look like in a deteriorated commonwealth? Or as Plutarch’s phrase, “What do you do when you are the steersman only of the shipwreck of the commonwealth?”

Hugh Liebert:

I’m very, very hesitant to disagree with De Alvarez. He’s a smart guy and has reading these things. I think my reading of this anyway is a really live question. The question we all should ask ourselves at every moment, what would Socrates do? I’m not sure that it’s clear that Socrates would do what Phocion does. Plutarch does make an explicit comparison between them so that’s absolutely right. So he opens that up for us as one possibility that Phocion is doing exactly what Socrates does. There are moments in the dialogues, in Plato symposium, for instance, where Alcibiades praises Socrates for fighting nobly in defeat at the Battle of Delium. There’s an element of that I think, to Phocion. How do you maintain your nobility even when you’re in defeat? So in that sense, very much like Socrates. However, there’s another philosopher in this life, Xenocrates, who’s the third in command of the academy. So after Speusippus and Plato, it’s Xenocrates. Xenocrates behaves very differently than Phocion does in this life. There are several points where Xenocrates stands on principle, refuses to cave, refuses to compromise, where Phocion is willing to compromise. Phocion will turn over some of the people that the Macedonians demand, the Athenians, to be executed because that will save the city. Xenocrates is not willing to do that sort of thing. I think it’s a really good question. Where does Socrates, as we know Socrates … And maybe we could ask it as Plutarch presents him, as Plato presents him as Xenophon because there’s some differences. Does he stand on principle in those cases or does he do what Phocion does, which is compromise in trying to save a corrupt city from utter ruin?

Rebecca Burgess:

So is good statesmanship possible when people are bad? What does that look like? And maybe you can tell us about the analogy or the little story that Plutarch begins a life with with the sundial and that analogy towards leadership or what I take to be-

Hugh Liebert:

So there’s a way of working across purposes of your times that he Plutarch admires in both Phocion and Cato the Younger. So I think there’s something to be said for that, but I think maybe the way I’d approach that question of what good statesmanship looks like … You know can ask, is Phocion basically fighting nobly only in retreat? He knows this is eventually going to go down and he just wants to slow down the decay or something like that. Or does he have any more positive agenda where he can envision a kind of reform and rebirth? And I think there are at least glimmers of what reform or rebirth would look like in this life. The passage I just mentioned to you about living to fight another day suggests that kind of project. We’ll get through this, we’ll survive and then we can rebuild. The two elements of the Phocion that I think suggests for what that rebuilding strategy would look like is on the one hand, whenever Phocion is fighting … So he’s general 45 times of Athens. He’s a great war leader and it’s remarkable that the Athenians keep electing him [foreign language 01:02:29], general, because he does nothing but insult the Athenians at every opportunity. But they seem to really like this. They realize it’s kind of tough feedback that they need or something, but they admire him for this. But he’s still, he’s very effective as a military leader even though his soldiers are constantly running away, constantly trying to call the shots. He says at one point, “There are way too many generals here, not enough soldiers.” But he’s still effective despite all of that because he seems to be able to attract a kind of core of very competent, capable, courageous soldiers to him. And with those people, can fight effectively in battle, even though much of his unit is kind of fading away at every opportunity. So that’s one thing, one path forward. Even in corrupt city, there’s probably a core of people who is capable of acting with discipline and courage and so on. And Phocion seems capable, at least in a pinch military crisis of identifying those people and fighting effectively with them. The second thing that’s remarkable about this life in terms of that issue of reform and renewal is that Plutarch tells us that when Athens finally falls under the sway of Macedon, and it has a much more oligarchical regime than it’s happened in a long time. So a lot of the demagogues are no longer able to speak and sway the populace and so on. Plutarch says it was a really good regime for Athens because Phocion was able to pick out the best guys in the city, the people who really deserved to rule, put those guys in power. And then the regime, even though it didn’t have autonomy, in fact had a Macedonian garrison for a lot of it, still was a very moderate kind of mixed regime, still had some democratic elements, but still had a capable more aristocratic types ruling it. And that’s a really paradoxical thing, but maybe autonomy isn’t a necessary condition for a good regime and for virtuous rule. Now, I’ll say when we’re thinking about Plutarch himself writing this, that has a special kind of power because that’s Plutarch’s situation precisely. His hometown that he loves deeply where he lives, and as far as we can tell is writing these works, is under Roman rule. He’s fully aware of that situation and he seems to be very concerned in a lot of his writings to figure out what noble statesmanship looks like under those conditions. But that’s Phocion’s problem too. And he more or less succeeds at it, at least until he doesn’t.

Rebecca Burgess:

Right. I hate to have to wrap us up, but we are over time, if you will. But this is such a good discussion and maybe there’s a last thing you want to say about Phocion, but also leading towards what you just mentioned is the condition under which Plutarch himself wrote in his project and how that project can speak to us today in terms of virtue and understanding and learning leadership, statesmanship and civic life.

Hugh Liebert:

Yeah. Well, I think we’ve touched on it a number of times, but maybe just to put a point on it. I mean, Plutarch wrote very consciously for people who were involved in politics, have philosophical interests, some aspirations to lead themselves. And he seems to have the idea that he, Plutarch, by setting up these lives the way he does can educate people in what they need to know to lead well, to be noble statesmen, regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in. So they might be circumstances like Solon, where the possibility of founding is out in front of you and you can do it. It might be circumstances like Pericles, where you have a city that seems to be approaching the height of its power, its capacity to create these noble, beautiful monuments that’ll last almost forever. Or it might be a situation like Phocion where your city is declining and it seems like there are a lot of people who aren’t particularly virtuous around you, but what do you do? I mean, there’s a good way to lead in that situation and a bad way. And so Plutarch is concerned to show us political virtue, like virtuous leaders in all of those different circumstances, in such a way that we can examine our own lives and learn how to be better people as a result of the works he gives us.

Rebecca Burgess:

I think of it also as being … Well, as we mentioned at the beginning, and we’ve said several times throughout, one of the crucial aspects of statesmanship or leadership is actually doing the job and failing and learning from the failure. And he shows us numerous times, Phocion makes several very large mistakes in terms of taking private virtue or private assurances and doing a public thing about it and allowing situations to get out of control almost. But it does … Oh, did you want to say something?

Hugh Liebert:

Well, I just wanted to underline that because I think you’re absolutely right and I think if there’s maybe one prejudice about Plutarch that’s useful to get out of the way in order to read him well is that he’s just some kind of hero worshiper who just wants to point out all the good things about these people. The lives we’ve been talking about are very clearly, warts and all, pictures of who these people were. In Pericles’ case, the pointy head is really central to how he tells the story. So he’s pointing out their flaws as well as their virtues. Kissinger does that as well, pointing out the ways in which these people he largely admires fall short in some respects. And if you’re a good reader, I think the trick is to condemn them in the proper measure for their failures and to try to learn along with them and to admire in particular the kind of leaders who fail and learn from their failure versus the leaders who fail and ignore their failure or don’t learn anything.

Rebecca Burgess:

And I think it’s all of the lives, all the projects, and especially these three that we mentioned are excellent illustrations of politics being the art of the possible, and that sometimes the best way forward is not grand, huge sweeping changes, but it’s this kind of incrementalism and understanding where your people are, where the demos are, and adjusting little by little to bring them up. Not to pander to them necessarily, but to bring them up to where the healthy city ought to be. And in that way, I see Plutarch’s project as putting philosophy before the city, but also the city before politics. Kind of a reverse Socratic apology.

Hugh Liebert:

No, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah. Yeah. Weber says politics is the slow boring of hard boards. There’s an element of that here too, facing up to that kind of incremental improvement that you have to be willing to accept, at least at certain points if you’re going to lead well.

Rebecca Burgess:

Right. Well, thank you so very much for joining me on this conversation, and I think what this means is that we need to have further conversations about different of the parallel lives.

Hugh Liebert:

This was a lot of fun, Rebecca. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Brian Smith:

Thank you for listening to another episode of Liberty Law Talk. Be sure to follow us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.