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– Revue de philosophie politique de l’ULg – N°5 – Mai 2013 – p. 142 555c ). Plato also calls for greater transparency in business: profits made in retail trade should be carefully recorded and be part of the public domain (e.g. 920c). Finally, he insists that the main purpose played by trade should be a fair redistribution of goods, and not the maximization of profits. « When goods of any kind are distributed disproportionately and unequally, anyone who makes the distribution equal and even cannot fail to do good. It needs to be stated that this redistribution… is precisely the purpose the trade is meant to serve » (Laws, 918b). In sum, Plato proposes to use the power of the state to curtail inequality amongst citizens, to restrict excessive luxury and wealth, and more generally, to make the life of « money-grubbers » difficult and unappealing. Citizens’ lust for money must thus be moderated by what will strike us as remarkably immoderate legal measures. But to Plato, Magnesia’s legal order was, on the contrary, the very embodiment of moderation. On a more general level indeed, it could be said that Magnesia’s entire constitution is guided by principles of measure and harmony – whether it concerns land distribution, marriage, the distribution of power, the degree of freedom permitted, or the desirable amount of health or wealth to be possessed by an individual. In all these domains of human life, the Athenian stranger insists that « the moderate man is God’s friend » (Laws 716d). Plato’s no-growth society? This paper sought to reflect not only on various reasons behind the neglect of the virtue of moderation in Plato scholarship, but also on the kinds of educational and institutional measures that might be entailed if one were interested in taking a politics of moderation seriously. Evidently, these thoroughly utopian proposals would turn our world upside down; it is hard to conceive how any of them could be put in place in our modern liberal democracies. But if we are sincere when we assert that overconsumption and immoderation are vices and that these may be at the root of our economic ills (as many like to do), there is little sense in refusing to initiate a reflection on the virtue of moderation. We saw that part of what moderation entailed according to Plato were a number of measures that are antithetical to notions that are at the core of our liberal and capitalist ethos – in particular, individual freedom and economic growth. But I have also indicated that for Plato, a moderate soul and a moderate city need not be seen as devoid of pleasure, friendship, and comforts. For all his ascetic inclinations, Plato did not call for the relinquishing of all wealth and material goods, but rather, like his
– Sophie Bourgault: « Prolegomena to a rehabilitation of Platonic moderation » – p. 143 student Aristotle, insisted on the need to see these for what they are: means, not ends. What Plato wants to hammer home is the idea that an excessive longing for money (or for the consumption of material goods) is indicative of a city where lives are poorly lived and where there is much mistrust and insecurity amongst its citizens. Once again, there is no doubt that Plato’s ideal of moderation is radically at odds with our vocabulary of growth and prosperity. Plato is instructive here precisely because he confronts us with one of the most radical visions of a no-growth society. In fact, the utopian politics set forth in his Laws is based entirely on the premise that growth is not good: the population of Magnesia ought to remain stable; every household’s finances should remain within a certain, pre-determined range of wealth; trade is to be regulated in order to minimize profit-making and market growth; mousikē and laws ought to remain fairly stable and geared towards civic virtue; citizens are to have secure lives and tranquil souls. Now, even if we are not willing to follow Plato all the way to Magnesia (and I believe that there are many good reasons why one would not want to), we may do well to hold on to some of the wider philosophical insights found within Plato’s reflections on sophrosyne. Plato’s suggestion that the « bulwarks » of our cities should lie in both moral education and institutional measures should, at the very least, give us pause as we seek to address social ills and economic crises. That a just city requires serious concern for both character and institutions may seem like a fairly commonplace teaching, but it is one that tends to be overshadowed when political discourse becomes overly polarized between social crusaders for « individual morality » and champions of institutional reform. Plato compels us to rethink this schism. Sophie Bourgault est professeure adjointe à l’École d’études politiques de l’Université d’Ottawa (Canada). Ses principales recherches portent sur la pensée antique, les éthiques de l’hospitalité et du care, ainsi que la pensée politique des Lumières françaises. En plus de chapitres de livre sur Platon, Simone Weil et Albert Camus, ses publications incluent des articles publiés dans Lumen, Symposium/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale, Implications Philosophiques, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Theory and Event. De plus, Sophie Bourgault est co-éditrice d’un collectif portant sur l’historiographie des Lumières (Brill, 2013). Elle peut être contactée à l’adresse sbourgau@uottawa.ca.
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