Political Implications of Group Agency in Plato’s “Republic”

For the 2024 edition of the MANCEPT Workshops taking place on 4-6 September at the Manchester Centre for Political Theory, University of Manchester, Stephan Stephanides, a post-doctoral researcher of our GROUPMINDS team, will be presenting a paper entitled ‘Political Implications of Group Agency in Plato’s Republic’ for the panel ‘Group Agency in Political Theory’. Building on his current postdoctoral work for the European Research Council (ERC) project “Group Minds in Ancient Narrative” and representing the University of Cyprus, Stephan will offer a historical perspective to the interdisciplinary panel by addressing some of the political questions arising from the model of group agency suggested in Plato’s Republic. His paper will be arguing that whilst the members of the polis envisaged in this dialogue subscribe to a ‘group perspective’ or ‘common ethos’ through shared beliefs of a certain kind and a commitment to joint societal functions, anticipating various recent insights in social science and ontology, Plato’s model of the polis as group agent rests on an extreme vision of the unity of the polis which generates significant points of contrast with contemporary discussions of groups as well as pressing implications for political theory.

In the ideal city of the Republic, citizens are required to share the ‘same beliefs’ (ὁμοδοξία) about how the city ought to be hierarchically arranged, constituting an ideal of ‘agreement’ (ὁμόνοια) or perhaps ‘sameness of mind’ in a much stronger sense on the central political question of which class in the city should rule and which classes should be ruled. Whilst these cognitive states are assumed to hold citizens in bonds of friendship (φιλία) and harmony (ἁρμονία), impacting the way that they see themselves as integral parts of a unified community towards which all their joint actions are aimed, Stephan’s paper will also stress that the potential merits of this model of group agency must also be countenanced against the restrictions on the individual rights and freedoms of citizens that such cognitive states might be thought to impose. For instance, does ὁμόνοια undermine the individual autonomy of citizens to govern their own lives democratically as part of a group? Conversely, since it has been suggested that membership in a group necessarily entails a certain loss of individual autonomy and agency, should we be weary of models of group agency which encourage strict like-mindedness as opposed to individuation and plurality of thought? These are some of the questions that Stephan hopes to shed light on in his contribution to this year’s MANCEPT Workshops, showing that ancient depictions of groups are still relevant to considerations about group agency and political theory today.