Xenophon

While Plato is by far the most famous contemporary of Socrates that wrote on him, there is one other philosopher whose works on him survive intact to the present day: Xenophon, whom Christopher Bruell writes about for his contribution to Strauss and Cropsey’s History of Political Philosophy. Much like Strauss’s own essay on Plato, Bruell divides his work into three parts, each one dealing with a different book by Xenophon, which are as follows: Cyropaedia, Memorabilia, and Anabasis.  In his introduction on Xenophon, Bruell makes major two points, one as has already been mentioned, along with Plato, Xenophon’s works are the only contemporary account of Socrates we have left. The other point he makes is that Xenophon’s writings have a monarchial bent, with him spending a lot of him examining the lives of kings and the aristocracy.   

The first part of Bruell’s essay deals with Cyropaedia, Xenophon’s thought on the Persian King Cyrus. In this essay, Xenophon shows Cyrus to be a product of his birth, nature, and education with none of those factors dominating the others. He also is shown to be a man that tried to emphasize continuity though change for while Persia went through rapid changes, Cyrus tried to stress its continuity to the part. One of the ways Cyrus did this was by trying to save the old Persian system from what he say as corrupting influences, primarily the influence of the Median royalty and its emphasis on luxury and the expense of what Cyrus saw as the more austere Persian way of life. With this in mind, it is perhaps not surprising that Cyrus’s power was more rooted in the Persian military than the Persian government as the Persian military was more suited for what Cyrus was as the better life. At the tile of Cyrus’s reign, the divisions of the Persian military reflected that of the Persian society at large, with a division between “peer” and “commoners.” Peers had undergone a Persian education and were well equipped for hand to hand combat while the commoners had not. Cyrus tried to move beyond this by giving the commoners opportunities to become peers and stressed the commonalty of the Persian people. While it is certainly true that there was some political motivation, as this greatly helped to expand his military, and while Cyrus was certainly no egalitarian as hierarchy still existed, it was more of a hierarchy rooted in personal achievement than birth. Thus, Cyrus produced what may be called an early example of a meritocracy. And while meritocracy is often seen as an ideal situation for many living in modern liberal democracies, for Cyrus’s contemporaries, including Xenophon, this was highly problematic as meritocracy was seen as increasing corruption. And indeed, as according to Xenophon, decay began to set in during Cyrus’s reign, this is proof for Xenophon that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible for people to rule over other people. Ultimately, Xenophon sides against Cyrus and in favor of the aristocratic Persian system, but what is interesting is that initially Xenophon does portray Cyrus sympathetically, which may be a ploy by Xenophon to purge his audience of any sympathy they may have of Cyrus’s reforms.

The next section of Bruell’s essay deals with Memorabilia, which mostly deals with Xenophon’s relationship with Socrates. This is important on one obvious level, as this gives us a picture of Socrates beyond the Platonic cannon, but this is also important on another level as the fact that most people consider Socrates innocent of the charges against him, rather than simply breaking an unjust law, is due to Xenophon’s influence. While Xenophon does defend Socrates on all the charges made against him, it is important to note that he does, at least in some ways hold less of a negative view of causing children to loose respect for their fathers, as Socrates was charged with that did many of his contemporary fellow Greeks would have. Beyond the trial though, Xenophon does emphasize two elements of Socrates’ thought that should be noted here. First off, Xenophon places greater importance on Socrates’ ideas on how limits are necessary. He also makes note of the great difficulty Socrates faced when dealing with divine punishment and divine reward.  Thus, it is from Xenophon’s writings that we can gain a picture of Socrates that Plato may have ignored, either intentionally or unintentionally, thus giving us more of a complete view of one of the most important philosophers to ever live.

The third and last section of Bruell’s essay deals with Anabasis, which while still giving some mention to Socrates, mostly focuses on the relationship between the Cyrus of Cyropaedia and his son, also named Cyrus. To differentiate between the two, they will henceforth be known elder Cyrus and younger Cyrus. Bruell’s section starts off with an interesting fact about Xenophon’s life. While Xenophon did believe Socrates was happier than younger Cyrus, Xenophon still left Socrates to join him on an expedition, against Socrates’ wishes. Regardless, in Anabasis, Xenophon greatly emphasizes the similarities between the Cyruses, but does still see the elder Cyrus to be an idealized version of the younger one. Xenophon was certainly critical of the elder Cyrus’s reign, but he sees the younger Cyrus as being far worse as he was overly eager to correct wrongdoings. As with the elder Cyrus’s semi meritocracy, many in the modern liberal world may not see this as a particularly egregious flaw, but for Xenophon, this was a major problem as in his zeal to correct wrongdoings, the younger Cyrus had to forsake prudence, a trait Xenophon saw as absolutely essential for the practice of politics. Through this, we can gain a strong understanding of what Xenophon sees as a requirement for good leaders, the ability to understand political necessity. Thus, through Xenophon we are left with a form of political philosophy that is distrustful of rapid change, schemes to try and better society, and also attempts to view politics in the possible and practical.