What the 431 BCE “Debate at Sparta” can show us about “identity politics” v. “politics of identity”

According to the Greek historian Thucydides, during the “Debate at Sparta” (431 BCE), an un-named Corinthian tried to persuade the city-state of Sparta to get involved in a fight Corinth was having with another city-state, Corcyra.

Why?

Corinth was fighting with Corcyra about yet another city-state, Potidea. Athens and Sparta were the dominant city-states in the Hellenic region. So, both Corinth and Corcyra were trying to get one of the big players to intervene, and the “Debate at Sparta” includes a speech by a Corinthian speaker trying to get Sparta to takes its side. But, if either Sparta or Athens got involved, it would not remain a proxy war–they’d go to war with each other. That war was unnecessary and would be unpredictable–while Sparta was far superior in land troops, the troops couldn’t be gone too long (they feared a slave rebellion), and they were far inferior in terms of naval strength.

The Corinthian speech is important for people now because it exemplifies how a rhetor can use demagoguery to persuade a community to opt for an unnecessary and highly destructive war.

We are in a culture of demagoguery, when normal policy disagreements are treated as battles in an existential war, and we’re in that situation because it’s profitable for media to give rhetors like the Corinthian air time. And ambitious rhetors can get air time by using that kind of demagoguery.

But, back to the debate.

Presumably, here’s the plan: If the Corinthian could get Sparta and Athens to go to war, then Athens would be too busy to take Corcyra’s side (which Athens was seriously considering) if Corinth and Corcyra went to war. It’s as though I wanted to get in a fight with Chester, but I’m afraid that you’ll take Chester’s side and the two of you will kick my ass. If I could get Hubert to start a fight with you, then you won’t be able to get involved in my fight with Chester.

But, here’s the Corinthian’s rhetorical problem. He has a really weak case, so weak that the standard moves of policy argument (what Aristotle would later call “deliberative” rhetoric) wouldn’t work. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is largely a book about rhetoric and decision-making. And the admirable leaders, generals, and rhetors in the book all make a similar argument about argument: when we are arguing about policy, we shouldn’t make the issue about the character of our opponent (what Aristotle calls “epideictic”), or the justice or injustice of the situation (appropriate for a courtroom).[1] Deliberation should be about expediency—what are our goals, and what policy(ies) are most likely to enable success?

Here I’m going to get into the weeds a bit, but the important point is that the Corinthian can’t make a reasonable argument claiming that Sparta is faced with an imminent threat from Corcyra, Athens, or Corinth losing its conflict with Corcyra.

Here’s the weeds. It isn’t expedient for Sparta to take Corinth’s side. There’s no particular gain for Sparta, and neither Corcyra nor Athens present an imminent threat to Sparta. Corcyra could win the conflict with Corinth, and it would make no difference for Spartan security. Athens is quite some distance away, not threatening to invade Sparta (which would be improbable). The two were useful allies during the most recent Persian invasion, and they’re oddly balanced—Sparta has a better infantry, and Athens has a better navy. Most important, the Hellenes (what we call the Greeks) only repelled Persia because Athens and Sparta allied against them. Were Athens and Sparta to go to war, Persia would benefit, as it would improve the likelihood that Persia would succeed with its next invasion.

So, since the Corinthian can’t make the argument in reasonable policy terms, he shifts the stasis[2]—that is, he tries to reframe the issue in a way that might enable him to persuade Sparta to make a decision both unnecessary and very risky. What the Corinthian does is make it an issue of implacably opposed identities, an existential battle, rather than a pragmatic question about savvy policy.

He says that the real conflict is not Corinth’s entirely self-serving goal of getting Sparta and Athens to go to war so Corinth can beat Corcyra, but a grand, existential, and inevitable battle between Sparta and Athens. He doesn’t argue that Athens’ actions present an imminent threat (he couldn’t, since they didn’t), but that its identity does. He doesn’t argue that Athens’ policy of expanding threatens Sparta (since it didn’t), but that Athens’ identity as an expansionist city-state did. So, in both cases, he shifts the stasis from actions to identity.

This shift from actions (expanding) to identity (expansionist) is a relatively common rhetorical strategy. It’s a particularly common move when rhetors would have trouble persuading an audience of their case through deliberation. We can deliberate about actions, since we can have evidence about what someone did or didn’t do, and we can use those actions as evidence about what they might do in the future. We can talk usefully about goals (especially if a person or party has said what they are), since stated goals are evidence about what someone will do.

But neither previous actions nor stated goals are proof of what someone or some group will do. People and groups don’t always behave in the same way, and so we often have to figure out which of the past actions and statements are relevant to what they will do now. There are a lot of ways that people try to make that determination, and I’ll mention two.

One is what my father (an expert on arteriosclerosis) called “hardening of the categories.” By that, he meant people who believed that every aspect of the world can be put into a Linneaus-like (or Ramistic, if you know your rhetoric) tree of discrete and binary categories. A person (or group, or nation) is either pacific or aggressive, rational or irrational. If you think of individuals or groups this way, then you look at what they’ve done and try to put them into the pacific or aggressive box, and then make your policy decisions. You’ve decided that they’re really aggressive or passive or whatever, and all the disconfirming data can be dismissed. This strategy of prediction doesn’t make the situation any less uncertain, but it can give people the feeling of certainty because it makes the situation more stark. It deflects or hides the inherent uncertainty to any political act.

The other method I want to mention says that people have tendencies, but context matters. They tend to be aggressive under these circumstances, not under those. This way of predicting behavior is more complicated than the first, and it includes rather than deflects uncertainty–that the relationship between Athens and Sparta is a conflict of essential identity.

The Corinthian makes the first kind of argument. The Athenians are, he says, aggressive, brave, risk-takers. Like many demagogues, he includes a little shaming. Spartans have declined to get involved in Hellenic issues (probably because of the problem their version of slavery brought them), and he says they procrastinate. It’s a politics of identity, in which city-states make decisions not because of advantages, disadvantages, policy options, contextual constraints, compromises, but because behavior is determined by identity.

If you know anything about policy argumentation, then you know that rational policy argumentation first means identifying the “ill.” What is the problem we’re trying to solve? So, what is the problem for the Corinthian?

It’s the war with Corcyra. That isn’t a compelling problem for Sparta, so the shift to identity enables the Corinthian to redefine the problem. It also redefines the solution. If the problem is the identity of the Athenians, and it’s their essential identity, then the Corinthian is advocating a war of extermination.

This is a politics of identity. This is always a politics of extermination.

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[1] This point is a major part of the speech Diodotus gives in a debate about genocide. Diodotus is almost certainly a fabrication of Thucydides.

[2] “Stasis” means place or hinge. What some people now call “stasis theory” is a modification of something Cicero said, and it’s one way to categorize stases. It’s much less useful and accurate than it might appear. It isn’t what I mean.