Public Action and Rational Choice in Classical Greek Political Theory

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 70 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradabanCHAPTER 5Public Action and RationalChoice in Classical GreekPolitical TheoryJosiah OberAs several of the chapters in this volume point out (especially Depew and Ludwig),Thomas Hobbes’s bleak view of humans as naturally solitary and motivated by fear ofdeath was not shared by classical Greek theorists. Yet joint action at scale remained aproblem. How could a large and diverse ‘‘public’’ come into being? How could apublic perform actions with substantial effects? These were difficult questions becauseGreek theorists regarded human beings not only as social (group-forming) andcommunicative (language-using) animals, but also as rationally self-interested andstrategic. Individuals are capable of distinguishing between what is good for themselvesfrom what may be good for others, and acting strategically on that knowledge.Recognizing that humans were sometimes, although not invariably, motivated byexpected utility maximization, Greek theorists sought to specify the conditions underwhich people might be expected to act more or less selfishly. 1Public Action: Incentives, Nature, and KnowledgeSocial problems that emerge because of rational self-interest can be grouped underthe rubrics of collective action (modeled in game theory by the Prisoner’s Dilemma),common pool resources (modeled by the ‘‘tragedy of the commons’’), and crediblecommitment (modeled by ‘‘Odysseus bound to the mast’’). Since an action thatmaximizes expected individual utility may not be the most cooperative (social utilitymaximizing) choice, human communities must solve incentive problems: How canlikely rewards and punishments, attached to particular courses of action, be institutionalizedsuch that individuals consistently choose more cooperative courses ofaction? The solution to the complex ‘‘game’’ (that is, the situation in which no one

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 71 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradabanPublic Action and Rational Choice in Greek Theory 71has a better strategic move, given his knowledge of the moves others are likely tomake in response) that emerges in an environment of social institutions constitutes asocial equilibrium which may be more or less stable and more or less productive.Groups with incentive systems yielding high and stable rates of return to cooperationare, all other things being equal, more productive. In the competitive environment ofthe Greek poleis, in which rival states competed for resources and weak competitorswere eliminated, there was strong pressure for each polis to seek competitive advantageby devising good incentives. This chapter argues that Greek theorists were wellaware of the issue. Although, in contrast to early modern contract theory, strategicself-interest was not the primary motor driving Greek political theory, problems ofincentives and self-interest are an important, and relatively overlooked, facet ofclassical political thought.Incentive problems come to the fore with the emergence of democracy. Asopposed to monarchy or closely held oligarchy (see Forsdyke, this volume, chapter15), where an individual or small corporate body can speak and act for ‘‘everyone,’’in a complex democratic state like Athens, the public is a demos: a large body ofpersons, socially diverse, and with diverse interests and preferences. How can thatdiverse public make decisions or carry them out? Democratic decision and executionrequire institutional mechanisms, including voting and deliberation, which are potentiallyvulnerable to strategic manipulation. By allowing diverse individuals tomake free choices, democracy creates space for free riding, and the size and diversityof the public raises questions of how that public’s commitments can be made credible.Moreover, when the polis is the ‘‘collective possession’’ of a demos, common poolresource issues loom: If each of the many ‘‘shareholders’’ of the polis chooses to takemore from the common pool than he gives back to it, the polis will collapse in a‘‘commons tragedy.’’ 2In a democracy, each member of the demos has interests somewhat different fromthose of every other member, and no one has authority to decide whose interestsshould be paramount. Deliberations over policy may be protracted (thus wastingvaluable time) or cut short, leaving people unsatisfied and prone to defect. Interestsharingsubgroups may seek to advance particularistic agendas by taking strategicadvantage of voting and deliberations. All of this serves to push up the costs of groupaction, and thus would seem to degrade the competitive advantage of democraciesrelative to their more hierarchical rivals. Yet in classical Greece, democracies (andother republican forms of political organization) often did very well in competitiveenvironments.The puzzles of why democracies (especially Athens) did well, and how nondemocraticcommunities might do better, stimulated the development of Greek politicalthought. In the later fifth and fourth centuries, Greek political theorists gained thedescriptive and analytic tools necessary to explain public action problems. Classicaltheorists addressed the puzzle of how democratic communities became and remainedproductive despite their costly processes for decision making and execution. Theiranswers centered around the organization of knowledge and, with Aristotle, humannature: Democracies did better than would otherwise be expected because democraticpolitical culture and institutions promoted the aggregation of useful knowledge

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 72 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradaban72 Josiah Oberdispersed across a diverse citizenry. Moreover, democracies gave citizens incentives tocooperate by providing cooperators with access to goods they wanted, includingassociation in public decisions. 3Incentive Problems in Greek LiteratureGreek literature had been concerned with incentive problems long before the classicalera. According to a tradition recorded in the Ehoiai (Hesiod frr. 196–204 MW; cf.Eur. IA 75 ff.), the suitors of Helen bound themselves by an oath to act in concert inthe interests of Helen’s husband if Helen were abducted. By this act of self-binding,the Achaean leaders had cut off the option of staying home. The oath, by providing acredible precommitment to a particular line of joint action, solved the coordinationproblem (‘‘I won’t act until you do’’) necessary to begin the Trojan War. Yet oncethey arrived at Troy, sustained joint action required that each hero have an incentiveto stay: the plot of Homer’s Iliad is driven by the incentives of fairly shared booty andhonors: When Agamemnon seized Briseis, Achilles lost his incentive to cooperate.The Iliad explores the consequences of Achilles’ rationally self-interested defection,and the difficulties attending Achilles’ eventual return, in the context of a culture thatincluded personal honor, friendship, and fame, as well as material goods in thecalculation of utility. The Odyssey is also much concerned with incentives: Odysseus’act of binding himself to the mast in order to listen to the Sirens has become astandard trope in the contemporary literature on precommitment (Elster 1979,2000). Odysseus solves his problem (his desire to hear the Sirens, without losinghis life) by eliminating in advance his option of acting on the new desires that will bestimulated by the Siren’s song. His precommitment (self-binding and orders to thecrew not to release him) prevented him from acting on reformed, self-destructive,preferences.Many other works of Greek literature address aspects of incentive problems:Hesiod’s didactic poetry is informed by a worldview that takes for granted thetendency of rational individuals to defect from cooperative behavior when it willadvance their own interests. The Works and Days is motivated by Hesiod’s brotherPerseus’ defection from the cooperative order of family land distribution and hisstrategic use of a corrupt legal order (the bribe-swallowing basileis) to carry out hisplan. Hesiod urges avoidance of public space and great care in lending and borrowing.Yet his enjoyment of trade goods (wine from Byblos) shows that he participatesin a system of exchange in which interpersonal and intercommunity cooperationunderwrites his way of life: Hesiod is far from a Hobbesian solitary. Aristophanes’characters tend to defect from cooperative public behavior when they perceive thatothers are not acting cooperatively; an example is Dikaiopolis’ private market inAcharnians. The ‘‘skeptic scene’’ in Ecclesiazusae (770–806) is a pointed case ofthe difficulty of coordination in the absence of credible precommitment: the skepticcharacter refuses to donate his private goods to a common store established by thenew women rulers of Athens until he sees others doing likewise. Obviously, if no one

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 73 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradabanPublic Action and Rational Choice in Greek Theory 73is willing to go first, the women’s revolutionary scheme will not get off the ground.Pseudo-Xenophon (2.17) links the problem of commitment directly to the institutionsof democracy, claiming that in an oligarchy, the state’s commitments areguaranteed by the names of the rulers, whereas in a democracy, treaties are underwrittenonly by the impersonal collectivity ‘‘demos’’ – to which no personal responsibilitycan attach. Lycurgus’ case, in his law court speech Against Leocrates, revolvesaround the conception of the polis as a common possession and the looming dangerof a commons tragedy: If the jurors acquit Leocrates, the democracy’s commitmentto sanction malefactors will be proven hollow. If and when that commitment ceases tobe credible, other individuals will rationally choose defection over self-sacrificingcooperation. And thus Athens will be more vulnerable to its enemies.The two preceding paragraphs are exempli gratia; cases of Greek authors addressingincentive problems could easily be multiplied. Of course, it is absurd to think thatclassical literature can be reduced to a meditation on incentives; the point is only thatGreek authors recognized choice problems as a rich source of narrative. The remainderof this chapter looks at how the baseline concern with rationality and incentivesdeveloped into sophisticated treatments of public action by Herodotus, Thucydides,Plato, and Aristotle.Herodotus on Utilities and Knowledge AggregationAristophanes, Ps-Xenophon, and Lycurgus each suggested that finding the rightincentives to achieve productive cooperation is difficult in democratic communities.Herodotus addresses the question of how a democratic public could come intoexistence and act effectively by contrasting monarchies with democracies (see further,Forsdyke, chapter 15). The contrast comes through clearly in his stories of KingCroesus of Lydia and his account of Athenian decision-making before Salamis.Rationally self-interested choices are made by calculating expected utility. Thesocial problem of collective action is solved when utilities arise from and are alignedwith cooperative choices. For Herodotus, this is a matter of ethics, as emerges fromCroesus’ request that Solon name the happiest man ever to have lived. According toHerodotus’ Solon, the happiest man was Tellus of Athens, whowas from a prosperous city, and his children were good and noble. He saw children bornto them all, and all of these survived. His life was prosperous by our standards, and hisdeath was most glorious: when the Athenians were fighting their neighbors in Eleusis, hecame to help, routed the enemy, and died very finely. The Athenians buried him at publicexpense on the spot where he fell and gave him much honor. (Hdt. 1.30.4–5, trans.Godley 1920)In the cultural environment evoked by Herodotus’ Solon, there is no conflictbetween individual and community interests: Tellus gave aid to his countrymen,died in battle, and was rewarded with a grave monument. Because archaic Athenian

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 74 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradaban74 Josiah Oberethical norms defined posthumous public honors as a utility, Tellus’ response to acommon danger was a rational choice. The community’s offer of honors in responseto heroism could be anticipated and therefore provided an incentive to take risksin battle for a man whose posterity was already guaranteed by fine children andgrandchildren. 4Along with the claim that no living man can be judged happy (since he may yetsuffer misfortune), ‘‘happy Tellus’’ taught a lesson about expected utility. Herodotus’fifth century readers learned that in the past, a life of optimum utility had beendefined by kinship (children and grandchildren), duty (fighting the community’senemies), and moderation (adequate prosperity rather than great riches). Solon’sfollow-up story, about the Argive brothers, Cleobis and Biton, has similar import.The choices of the three men regarded by Herodotus’ Solon as happiest wererational, in their historical and cultural context, not only because each chose tomaximize his culturally-defined utility but also because each made his choices underconditions approaching complete social information. Herodotus emphasizes that allmortals were subject to misfortune, yet Solon’s happy exemplars had been able tomake life-choices with confidence, based on their own inductive knowledge of theunwritten rules of their societies. Maximizing utility through rationally chosencourses of action did not conflict with the good of their communities because theirdesires were moderate and their ambitions could be realized within the frame ofcooperative choices and actions.The traditional morality expounded by Herodotus’ Solon, based on full socialinformation and limited horizons of desire, contrasts sharply with the moral universeof the ambitious eastern monarch. Croesus’ utility function is centered on displayingluxury goods and unlimited accumulation of imperial possessions. Although his scopeof action is much greater than that of Solon’s happy men, Croesus’ ambitions are illalignedwith his choices. Unlike Tellus, Cleobis, and Biton, Croesus cannot accuratelyforetell the likely consequences of his acts because his decisions are not framed by acomprehensible system of culturally defined incentives and sanctions. Croesus is not acandidate for Solon’s happiest man, not only because he is still alive, but because hisposition as an autocratic ruler makes renders it difficult for Croesus to choose well inhis own or his country’s interest (see further, Forsdyke, chapter 15).Herodotus’ fifth century Athenian readers inhabited neither Croesus’ world northat of Tellus. They might look back upon ‘‘Tellus’ world’’ with nostalgia, but theirlives were lived in different circumstances and according to different plans: As a resultof structural changes in fifth century Athenian society, the traditional Greek understandingof individual utility came under pressure. The transformation of Athens,from ‘‘the world of Tellus’’ to ‘‘the world of Themistocles, Pericles, and Alcibiades’’ –from a relatively simple and directly comprehensible traditional society in whichrationally self-interested and socially cooperative choice-making were aligned, to acomplex and even ‘‘modern’’ society accessible only by organized knowledge – was aproduct of the emergence of Athenian democracy, the growth of an Athenian empire,and the burgeoning of an Athens-centered exchange economy. Among the questionsHerodotus and his audience confronted was how the ‘‘modern’’ Athenian publiccame to be reconstituted, such that it was capable of acting as a collectivity in the face

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 75 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradabanPublic Action and Rational Choice in Greek Theory 75of the substantially increased potential for rational choices to diverge from cooperativechoices. One answer was provided by contrasting the behavior of the Atheniandemos with that of Croesus. 5A monarch can make his decisions and act upon them without directly confrontingpublic action problems. Yet a monarch faces difficulties in gaining the right informationfor effective decision-making. Lacking Tellus’ inductive knowledge of a stablesocial system to frame his choices, Croesus required external sources of information,both to gain more wealth and to confirm the value of his current holdings: ergo hisconversation with Solon and his consultation of the Delphic oracle. Upon being toldby the oracle that if he were to attack his eastern rival, a great empire would beoverthrown, Croesus invaded Persian-held territory and his army was crushed in aPersian counterattack. Croesus’ failure shows that monarchical decision-making,while avoiding the costs associated with public action, may not yield competitiveadvantage in the absence of the right sort of knowledge. Croesus lost his kingdombecause he confused oracular information, which could be bought, with knowledge ofhow best to act, which was not a readily purchased commodity. In his intertwinedstories of Croesus, Solon, and Delphi, Herodotus’ connects expected utility andsocial choice-making with knowledge-seeking. Taken together, these stories exposethe gap between gaining information and acting appropriately, based on knowledge:The point is that information gained outside a social context like that of ‘‘Tellus’world,’’ outside a context of full social information and inductive knowledge,becomes valuable only if it is properly aggregated and analyzed. The question,then, is how the Athenian public could aggregate information and analyze it oncethe Athenians had left Tellus’ world behind.Among the major themes of Herodotus’ sprawling history is Athens’ emergence asa power substantial enough to tip the balance in the Greeks’ favor in the Greco-Persian wars of 490–78 BC. In seeking to explain Athenian success, Herodotus links asudden growth in national military capacity with the birth of democracy by emphasizingthe value of isegoria: equality in respect to public speech (5.78: quoted byForsdyke, chapter 15). In explaining why the Greeks won, Herodotus pointedlyemphasizes Athens’ role (Hdt. 7.139). Herodotus argues that the key moment forthe Greek war effort came when the Athenians decided not to abandon their homelandand flee from Greece, even though confronted by apparently dire oracles fromDelphi. The Athenians had an extraordinarily large navy that had been built, asHerodotus explains (7.144.1–2), through a cooperative and forward-looking publicdecision to treat silver revenues as a common pool resource, rather than choosing percapita distribution. The Athenians might have chosen abandoning Greece over stayingto fight. Had they done so, in Herodotus’ view, the Persians would have won.The Athenian decision-making process leading to Salamis therefore becomes thelinchpin in the Greek victory in the Persian Wars – and equally decisive in establishingAthens’ dominant place in the postwar world. In his account of Athenian decisionmakingbefore Salamis, Herodotus shows his readers how the internally diverseAthenian demos acted as a public, by employing isegoria in choosing, rationally andcooperatively, to fight the Persians at sea. At the heart of the process is an institutionalizedcapacity to aggregate and to analyze useful knowledge.

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 76 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradaban76 Josiah OberIn Herodotus’ narrative (7.140–4) the Athenians, like Croesus, first sought oracularinformation. But rather than simply acting on that information, they gathered in adeliberative decision-making assembly to decide what to do about it. Each citizen atthat open assembly possessed certain social and technical information; the publicconstituted by the assembly potentially had access to a great deal of information thatwould otherwise be widely dispersed. The process of deliberating about the meaningof oracular information was open; multiple opinions (gnōmai pollai) were offered.Elders and experts in oracle interpretation were consulted, but their interpretationdid not adequately account for what many others in the assembly knew and so failedto carry the day. Eventually, Themistocles offered a policy that aligned oracularinformation with what many individual assemblymen knew about emergent Atheniannaval capacity. Herodotus’ account of Athenian decision-making at this all-importantjuncture ignores the moment of voting. Instead, it directs our attention to the valueof social knowledge: the Athenian’s common conviction that the fate of the communitycould be entrusted to the thousands of men who would row the recentlyconstructed warships. The inherently costly process of publicly deliberating hadthe effect of reinforcing the Athenians sense of themselves as a public. It helped tobetter align diverse individual interests with a high-risk, high-payoff public choice byaggregating and analyzing both the technical and the social knowledge necessary tomake a decision that proved to be a good one. Herodotus knew that a democraticpublic would not always make decisions better than those made by an individual(5.97.2–3), but his narrative helped his reader to grasp how democratic decisionmakingcould be correlated with the polis’ success.Thucydides on Innovation and LearningThucydides was deeply concerned with public action and especially with the problemof the free rider, that is, the defector who rationally seeks to share in the benefitsof others’ social cooperation without assuming any of the costs. Thucydides sawthat free riding was likely in a large and prosperous democracy: By expanding therange of choices available to free citizens, and by eliminating social sanctions typicalof intimate and traditional Greek communities, Athenian-style democracy alsoexpanded free riders’ opportunities. The relationship between political regime andthe organization of useful knowledge is, for Thucydides, integrally related to theproblem of collective political action. Thucydides shows his readers how Athens’distinctive knowledge regime helped it do well in competition with rivals. If Herodotus’account focuses our attention on public formation and knowledge aggregation,Thucydides’ analysis suggests that outstanding democratic performance was due toconjoining productive technical innovations with a sustained capacity for reapingbenefits associated with social learning. If innovation and learning were broughtinto balance, the returns to social cooperation would more than make up for lossesto free riders – especially if democratic culture identified and sanctioned free ridingand if democratic institutions prevented known free riders from taking an undeserved

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 77 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradabanPublic Action and Rational Choice in Greek Theory 77share of social goods. The key problem, as he also shows, is that balancing innovationand learning is difficult.In his assessment of Pericles at 2.65, Thucydides offers a retrospective of thePeloponnesian War and emphasizes the greatness of Athenian resources on the eveof the war. Thucydides is at pains to show that Athens could have won: Pericles wasrightly confident that Athens could prevail by avoiding foolish strategic errors, givenAthens’ superiority in human and material resources – resources that Thucydidesshows to be the product of reaping the benefits of internal social cooperation, andreinvesting them in an empire that enriched each individual Athenian (to the extentthat he cooperated with his fellows) and the Athenian state. The empire was sustainedby the rational preference of weaker states for a hegemonic state that would protectthem (in its own interest) from pirates and other powerful states (1.7–8). Thesepoints are reinforced in Pericles’ two assembly speeches in Thucydides’ text (1.40–4,2.60–4), which focus on the correlation between Athenian resources and socialcohesion: on the key importance of remaining a public rather than devolving intointerest subgroups concerned only with strategic bargaining. Much of Thucydides’history recounts how Athens’ extraordinary resources were subsequently squanderedby inferior post-Periclean leaders, who proved incapable of managing a willful demos.That failure of leadership was exacerbated, he suggests, first because the high level ofrational social cooperation that had characterized Athens in the expansive prewaryears was not fully sustained under the pressure of war, and second because Athens’opponents adopted Athenian habits of innovation and social learning. 6In Thucydides’ history, political culture and institutions provide the keys toexplaining rationally cooperative social behavior. In the funeral oration (2.35–46)Pericles asserts that Athens is characterized by a culture of open access and describesAthens’ participatory decision-making process. His argument bears directly on theintegration of rational choices with useful knowledge: Rather than depending on ahomogenizing Spartan-style ideology of mandatory sameness, Athenians are diversein their interests and capacities and free to make choices accordingly. Unlike thesecretive, discipline-obsessed Spartans, Athenians enjoy an equal opportunity to learnfrom all those public sources that render the city an ‘‘openly shared commonpossession’’ (2.39.1), as well as an equal opportunity to share the fruits of cooperation.Pericles celebrates the fact that there is no standard Athenian civic curriculumnor specialized institutions for teaching courage; free citizens freely choose to fightwhen necessary as a result of living in a free city. There are no preestablished criteriafor assuming the role of public innovator; anyone might be capable of demonstratingexcellence in some domain – by possessing political skills and sharing what he knows,each citizen could benefit himself and his society.The burden of Pericles’ speech is that democratic Athens is distinctively meritocratic,distinctively free and open, and therefore distinctively great. Pericles describesAthens as a community of responsibly self-interested individuals. He asserts thatpolitically relevant knowledge is indeed widespread among Athenian citizens – evenamong those who focus primarily upon their own affairs. He explains the role ofmutual instruction and deliberative rhetoric in democratic decision-making. Pericles’Athenians recognize that only some people will actually serve as public speakers. But

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 78 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradaban78 Josiah Oberall citizens are expected to participate in making decisions as responsive members ofthe judging audience of voters. This means that voters are not passive recipientsof public speakers’ rhetorical performances; rather they are active judges in theirown and the public interest, and fully capable of dismissing incompetents. Periclesacknowledges the possibility that some may seek to free ride by sharing in the publicgoods produced by the political activity of others: Those who do not engage in thegive and take of mutual instruction, those concerned only with their private ends, arenot just ‘‘apolitical’’ but ‘‘useless’’: contemptible and deserving of being sanctionedas such (2.40). 7According to Thucydides’ Pericles, it is a conjunction of a unique form of governmentwith a unique public culture that fosters the integration of public and privateinterests. This in turn facilitates a unique Athenian capacity to conjoin bold anddecisive action with thoughtful public deliberations. Deliberation over policybecomes a public process of teaching and learning by accessing openly availableinformation and judging reasoned arguments. Thucydides’ Pericles describes thedemocratic collectivity as a public of choice-making individuals, each freely strivingto improve his personal position. Pericles overtly contrasts this Athenian ‘‘publicaction based’’ understanding of the cooperative group that emerges from an equilibriumamong the rational individual choices made by free agents, with the Spartans’compulsory approach to community and hostility to any expression of individualdifference. Pericles’ funeral speech culminates in his vision of Athens as an educationto its own citizen and as a model that other states might fruitfully seek to emulate.Exactly how this emulation will manage to coexist with sustained Athenian uniqueness,he does not say; Thucydides’ subsequent narrative shows it will be a formidabletask under the ever-changing conditions of total war.Plato on Rational Choice in the Ideal StateWhile Plato scorned the sources of Athenian wealth (Grg. 517a–19b), he readilyadmitted the value of material flourishing to choice-making individuals. Plato’sRepublic shows that he was also well aware of the close association of materialflourishing with a community’s capacity to reap the social benefits of cooperation.The project of the Republic is the design of an ideal city by Socrates and hisinterlocutors. They seek to understand the role of justice in the individual soul andthe community. The project begins with Socrates’ claim that organized communitiesoriginally emerged because individuals rationally desired to gain for themselves thematerial benefits of cooperation: Every person needs many things and no one is selfsufficientlycapable of providing those things for himself. People thus require ‘‘partnersand helpers’’ if they are to live truly human lives, and they ‘‘share things with oneanother, giving and taking, . . . because each believes that this is better for himself’’(369b–-c, emphasis added). To be effective, this sharing must be systematic, and thusit requires the institutions of marketplace, currency, and retail trade (371c–d). Withthese premises established, and the institutions of rational exchange in mind, Socrates

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 79 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradabanPublic Action and Rational Choice in Greek Theory 79sketches a small interdependent community, a modest ‘‘first polis.’’ Because thedesires of the inhabitants are limited to the basics of reproduction, nourishment,and shelter, they need no elaborate systems of wealth-getting. Nor need they providefor the organized defense of their community, since their simple possessions areinsufficient to attract the rapacious attention of outsiders. The level of social cooperationdemanded is minimal; few incentives or sanctions are called for, so institutionscan remain vestigial.This first polis is praised by Socrates as healthy, but Glaucon berates it as fit only forpigs and demands a community provided with delectable food and real furniture(372a–d). After the first polis is abandoned, the ideal state that is the subject of thethought experiment of the Republic is presumed to be composed of individuals withGlaucon’s more expansive conception of individual utility: The expansion of thedesires of the citizens to include luxury goods leads inexorably to an expandedinstitutional infrastructure to support and to defend them. As the polis grows incomplexity, it must also occupy an expanded physical territory and gains a larger andmore diverse population (372e–373d). The expansion of the imagined ideal polissharpens the issue of public action. Socrates’ interlocutors in the Republic hadpreviously agreed upon the ‘‘Unique Aptitude Doctrine’’ – this fundamental principleasserts that because true expertise can only be developed in a single realm ofendeavor, each individual must engage in only a single occupation. 8 Because the poliscontains desirable luxury goods, it will excite the cupidity of outsiders and must beable to defend its members and their property from attack. The farmers, craftsmen,and traders who are the polis’ first members are forbidden by the Unitary AptitudeDoctrine from serving as warriors. The ideal state’s population must therefore includea specialized military class, the Guardians (373e–374e).What will prevent these fierce-spirited specialists in violence, with their internalmonopoly of organized force, from acting violently toward one another, thus catapultingthe polis into civil war, and from cooperating with one another in forciblyseizing the goods of the unarmed producing classes, thus institutionalizing piracy(375b–c, 416a–c)? Absent the right sanctions and incentives, Plato assumes that themembers of the military class will choose, like Homer’s Agamemnon or the possessorof the famous invisibility-producing ‘‘ring of Gyges’’ (359c–360d), to maximize theirown utility by taking the goods of others. There is no ‘‘human nature based’’ altruism(inherent concern for others’ interests) built into the foundation of Plato’s ideal state;it faces the incentive problems confronted by every complex society.The ultimate goal of the dialogue is to demonstrate the utility of justice as an end initself, that is, that actually being just (which includes not seizing the goods of otherseven if there is no chance of being caught) is more beneficial to the individual (i.e.maximizes his true utility) than is acting unjustly (by maximizing apparent utility)while appearing to be just. Yet the long dialogue also shows that genuinely graspingthe true utility of justice is a difficult undertaking – perhaps achievable only by a veryfew specially talented individuals who have completed a long and rigorous philosophicaleducation. Given Plato’s theory of knowledge, it is not open for him to resort tothe democratic forms of knowledge aggregation and innovation discussed by Herodotusand Thucydides. Plato’s solution is to resort to the sort of strong ideology

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 80 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradaban80 Josiah Oberthat Thucydides’ Pericles had proudly rejected and to a highly specialized form ofmonarchy that elides the problem exposed by Croesus’ analytic failure and consequentincapacity to fulfill his wants.The problem is that the unarmed members of Callipolis own private property, butthey will have no incentive to develop that property in economically productive waysif it is subject to arbitrary seizure by the Guardians. Plato recognized that, in theabsence of secure property rights on the part of the unmilitarized classes, the societywill not produce substantial returns to social cooperation and will fail. That recognitiondemands specialized institutions: an elaborate system of education for theGuardians, and ideological indoctrination for all citizens. The Guardians are trainedfrom childhood to treat productive insiders as friends, rapacious outsiders as enemies.Each Guardian’s acquisitive tendencies and Tellus-like concern with posterity are,moreover, finessed by communal ownership of property, including wives and children.Specialized education and communal property in turn provide the springboardfor developing the conjoined moral and metaphysical argument of the dialogue.Solving the public action problems that necessarily arise with the abandonment ofthe modest ‘‘first polis’’ eventually pays out in the theory of Forms, and the rule ofphilosopher-kings who have apprehended the Form of the Good. Thinking aboutrational choice and public action segues naturally to Plato’s highly distinctive conjunctionof politics, metaphysics, and epistemology.Aristotle’s Rational Political AnimalsLike Plato, Aristotle was concerned with the emergence of communities, the challengeof cooperation, and the tendency of communities to devolve into mistrustful factionseach strategically seeking its own partisan advantage. Aristotle’s Politics book 1explains the emergence of the polis as a natural phenomenon (see further, Depew,this volume, chapter 26). In moving from the choice-making individual to the complexpolitical community, Aristotle describes series of developmental steps: First isthe family as a natural unit for biological reproduction: the baseline Tellus-likehuman concern for posterity makes the family a rational as well as natural unit. Nextcomes the village, as families choose to join forces in order to gain two basic goods:better security against hostile natural forces and the conditions of justice. By conditionsof justice, Aristotle means the benefits of social cooperation: Aristotle’s twoprimary definitions of justice in the Politics are ‘‘acting in the common interest’’and ‘‘acting fairly in respect to the distribution of goods.’’ Yet, like the simple ‘‘firstpolis’’ in Plato’s Republic, the Aristotelian village proves unable to secure forits residents material goods adequate to assure their autarkic existence as an independentcommunity. The final developmental stage is the polis, which conjoins villagesinto a political whole. Aristotle’s natural polis represents balances of extremes of scale:It is the smallest community capable of gaining autarky and the largest communitycapable of maintaining an adequate level of mutual moral knowledge amongits citizens.

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 81 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradabanPublic Action and Rational Choice in Greek Theory 81These considerations lead directly to Aristotle’s famous claim that humans arepolitical animals. As David Depew’s chapter demonstrates, the distinctive feature ofAristotle’s argument is its naturalism: Humans are, for Aristotle, characterized by anatural tendency to live in groups. Moreover, humans are among the ‘‘political’’subset of group-dwelling animals – that is to say creatures that, by their nature, areprone to work cooperatively toward common ends. This active work for the good ofthe whole is in contrast to the passive advantages attributable to baseline coordination(e.g. better chances of noticing the presence of predators) experienced by apoliticalherd animals, like schooling fish. Aristotle recognizes that humans are not the onlyanimals whose sociability leads them to act cooperatively in seeking common ends,but as group members, humans act somewhat differently from other political animals(such as bees), inter alia because humans can identify individual as well as collectiveinterests. Humans are, according to Aristotle, more political than bees, indeed ‘‘themost political’’ of animals (Pol. 1253a). If we were to take ‘‘being political’’ to meansimply ‘‘working cooperatively for the good of the whole,’’ and thus ‘‘most political’’as ‘‘most inherently cooperative,’’ we would have to suppose, counterfactually, thatAristotle’s political theory broke radically with earlier Greek writers who, as we haveseen, accepted individuals as rationally self-interested and were therefore concernedwith incentive problems and public action. In fact, ‘‘being most political’’ means, forAristotle, something quite different from ‘‘being most cooperative.’’Aristotle associates the hypertrophy of human ‘‘political nature’’ directly with ourlinguistic ability: Being ‘‘most political’’ is correlated with our distinctively humancapacity to communicate effectively with one another about what is advantageous andharmful, right and wrong, good and evil. Humans are unique among the ‘‘politicalanimals’’ in that we use speech to communicate complex information and seek ourends. Speech furthers the potential for high returns to cooperation through exchangeof information regarding what is jointly or severally advantageous. Moreover, byenabling us to deliberate about justice, it potentially furthers the ultimate humanend of moral flourishing under conditions of justice. Yet Aristotle knew that speechcould also be used deceptively, to further individual ends that were contrary tocommon ends, as he demonstrates repeatedly in his Rhetoric. By describing humansas especially political and capable of cooperation, Aristotle was not seeking to paperover problems of public action.In his discussion of what makes humans the most political of animals, Aristotlesuggests that communication about advantage, relevant to joint and several materialflourishing, cannot be separated from moral considerations relevant to justice. Thearguments developed in Aristotle’s Politics seek to demonstrate that the genuinelyflourishing human community will be one that is strong in a material sense andmoral: well supplied with the practical means to survival and with the conditions ofjustice. The flip side of this assumption is, however, that every human communitycontains the seeds of its own potential failure. Aristotle’s humans are ‘‘the mostpolitical’’ of animals not because they invariably act most justly and thus cooperativelyin sharing knowledge but because they have the greatest range of possible choices.They may choose to use speech strategically, to advance plans that are unjust: againstthe common interest or unfair in respect to distribution. The potential for strategic

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 82 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradaban82 Josiah Obermanipulation is built into the base of Aristotle’s conception of human beingsas especially political animals. Much of the Politics (notably book 5) is devotedto analyzing how things go wrong in polis communities. Aristotle proposes institutionalincentives and sanctions that might counteract the tendency of individualsand subgroups to act in their own selfish advantage in ways that lowered returns tosocial cooperation and thereby undermined the moral end of living the best possiblelife: mutatis mutandis, Aristotle’s concerns map those of Herodotus’ Solon in thestory of Tellus.According to the logic of Aristotle’s argument in the Politics, all ‘‘completehumans’’ (i.e. adult male who are not slaves by nature: see again, Depew, chapter26) are ‘‘political animals’’ possessing an innate impulse (1253a30: phusei . . . hēhormē) to form a community, in order to achieve the material and moral ends that canonly be realized via political communication. In terms of governance, this means thateach citizen should not only be willing to, but should want to participate in governance.The proper form of this participation is ‘‘ruling over others and being ruled bythem, in turns.’’ In Aristotle’s theory all adult males are, in the first instance, left inthe picture as participants in the work of politics, work that is predicated, as we haveseen, on inherent capacity and the material value of mutual instruction: Humannature includes an innate predisposition to deliberate with one another on howbest to achieve ends. That disposition is, as Aristotle makes clear in his treatment ofcivil conflict arising from disenfranchisement of free natives (in tyrannies and narrowoligarchies), grounded in baseline assumptions about utility: For Aristotle, completehumans naturally take political participation, in the sense of ‘‘association in decision,’’as an intrinsic part of their utility. 9In order to achieve (or even pursue) eudaimonia, people require an adequacy ofboth material and political goods. Different people may value the political good ofassociation in decision differently, but those with ‘‘healthy souls’’ will assign deliberationa relatively high value. 10 Justice, as fair distribution, requires that participationrights, as well as material goods, be fairly distributed. Yet there are many forms ofparticipatory turn-taking. Aristotle has no need of the implausible notions thateveryone should take a turn at every political role or that all need to be associatedin every decision. Aristotle’s conception of human nature allows for a wide range ofindividual human characters and their associated behaviors (detailed in NicomacheanEthics and Rhetoric, and see Ludwig, this volume, chapter 19). In any regime, someambitious individuals will seek positions of leadership. Others will require only thatleaders gain their positions legitimately, consult with others appropriately beforemaking decisions, announce decisions publicly, and remain appropriately accountable.The scope of participation is broad, but given the prominence of politicalactivity in Aristotelian utility, not infinitely so.Among the notable aspects of Aristotle’s rational naturalism is the expansiveness ofthe body of citizens it implies. Unlike quotidian Greek aristocratic assumptions aboutintrinsic human worth, or Callipolis’ foundational ‘‘noble lie,’’ Aristotle’s initialdescription of human capacity and motivation offers no intrinsic grounds for excludingany ‘‘complete human’’ from ruling in his turn – indeed exclusions come at a highcost, since they necessarily reduce the utility of those excluded and lead to concerted

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 83 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradabanPublic Action and Rational Choice in Greek Theory 83efforts to change the regime in the direction of inclusiveness. Aristotle’s ‘‘naturalpolis’’ is congruent with (although certainly not identical to) Thucydides’ Pericles’vision of democratic Athens as a society whose success emerges from an equality ofparticipatory opportunity. Aristotle is, however, far from a Periclean democrat: asDepew shows, the ‘‘polis of our prayers’’ adds special features, to ensure that thenative adult male population (the demos) is also a leisured elite.By building an inherent and rational desire for association in decision into baselinehuman utility, Aristotle diverged not only from his successors: the early modern socialcontract theorists – but also from his predecessors: earlier Greek political theorists.Aristotle’s naturalism enabled rational choice-making by utility-maximizing individualsto be a motor for cooperative political action, as well as (via free riding) a threat tocooperation. I have argued elsewhere that one implication of Aristotle’s argumentabout political animals (although he never states it in these terms) is that deliberative,participatory democracy emerges as the best form of governance for the humancommunity. If this argument is right, Aristotle unexpectedly provides a perfectionistexplanation for democratic flourishing: Democracy leverages our innate human capacitiesby enabling each of us to do certain things that we naturally want to do. Butunlike overoptimistic modern communitarians, Aristotle recognized that in the realworld, aligning rational self-interest with natural sociability required considerableinstitutional machinery. As a result, the middle books of the Politics are devoted tocomplex incentive schemes meant to give people good reasons for choosing to act incooperative ways that were in fact in their own deepest interests. 11FURTHER READINGStudying the relationship between the choices made by rational agents in political regimes(especially democracy) and the organization of useful knowledge is a relatively recentdevelopment within the fields of social epistemology and political science. This chapter is acondensation of a book in progress on the subject of how Greek writers approached thequestion. See, meanwhile, Ober 2008.The emerging field of social epistemology explores the relationship between forms of knowledge,judgment, and social contexts, without resorting to the strong postmodern conclusionthat knowledge is simply a function of social relations. Fundamental work in the areaincludes Searle 1995 and Goldman 1999. For an introduction to rational choice theory as itis employed by political scientists, see Elster 1986, updated in Elster 2007; the field issurveyed in detail in Mueller 2003. For uses of choice theory to explain aspects of ancientGreek democracy, see, for example, Schwartzberg 2007 and Kaiser 2007.Choice theorists are often pessimistic about the potential of participatory democracy. Hardin2002 is a succinct statement of the problems. Mackie 2003 has, however, argued thatdemocracies operating in the real world are less vulnerable to public choice than choicetheorists have claimed. The problems associated with preference aggregation are in any eventless pressing when we reconceive democracy as a method of aggregating, coordinating andcodifying useful knowledge. J.S. Mill in the mid-nineteenth century and John Dewey in themid-twentieth century helped to define the relationship between democracy and knowledge.

Balot: A Companion to the Roman Army 9781405151436_2_c05 Final Proof page 84 18.11.2008 7:49pm Compositor Name: PDjeapradaban84 Josiah OberUrbinati 2002 demonstrates that Mill turned to Athenian practice when developing histheory of democracy as a form of active civic education that would, over time, increase the‘‘intelligence’’ of society. E. Anderson 2006 develops Dewey’s concept of democraticexperimentalism with reference to F.A. Hayek’s mid-twentieth century work on the socialuses of knowledge.NOTES1 Survey of rational choice and public action problems: Mueller 2003.2 Collective action: Olson 1965; R. Hardin 1982. Precommitment: Elster 1979, 2000.Commons tragedy: G. Hardin 1968. Polis politics as share-holding: Ostwald 1996.Mackie 2003 argues that democracies are less vulnerable to strategic manipulation thanchoice theorists have claimed.3 Explaining the outstanding performance of democratic Athens, in the face of the highcosts of democratic decision-making, is the burden of Ober 2008. Greek political thoughtas a response to democratic success: Ober 1998.4 On the cultural context of the story (Solon in Lydia) and its relevance for how Herodotus’original readers might have taken it, see Kurke 1999. On the Eleusinian context ofTellus’ burial and the contrast with fifth-century Athenian practice: L’Homme- Wéry1999, 114–18. I owe much to B. King 1997, a thoughtful exploration of how the Tellusnarrative defines Herodotus’ ethical thought.5 ‘‘Modernity’’ of classical Athens: Ober 2006.6 See, further, Ober 1998: ch. 2; Kallet 2001.7 Cf. Manville 1997; Brennan and Pettit 204.8 Unique Aptitude Doctrine: Resp. 369e–370c; 374a–e; with Reeve 1988: 172–7.9 Civil conflicts: Ober 2000; ‘‘association in decision’’: Ober 2007.10 Aristotle on wealth-getting: Meikle 1995, with literature cited.11 See further Ober 2005a.