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'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? фраза на латыни древнеримского поэта Ювенала, в зависимости от контекста переводится как "Кто будет охранять саму охрану?" или "Кто следит за следящими?" и т.д.
Содержание
История
Рассматривал проблему древнегреческий философ Платон в своём диалоге под названием Государство. Идеальное общество описывал
History
The essential problem was posed by Plato in The Republic, his major work on government and morality. The perfect society as described by Socrates, the main character in this Socratic dialogue, relies on laborers, slaves and tradesmen. The guardian class is to protect the city. The question is put to Socrates, "Who will guard the guardians?" or, "Who will protect us against the protectors?" Plato's answer to this is that they will guard themselves against themselves. We must tell the guardians a "noble lie".[1] The noble lie will assure them that they are better than those they serve and it is therefore their responsibility to guard and protect those lesser than themselves. We will instill in them a distaste for power or privilege; they will rule because they believe it right, not because they desire it.
Usage
The saying has since been used to explore the question of where ultimate power should reside, or alternately, the problem of ultimate power. Some forms of government attempt to solve this problem through separation of powers (the government of the United States is one example). As long as the "watchers" are a small and potentially corruptible group, the question asked is a sort of paradox, and perhaps an example of infinite regress.
The saying has been used by Anarchists and libertarians to point out that there should not be a monopoly on violence in a geographical area. Any form of separation of powers is an example of infinite regression. The solution proposed by right-libertarianism is an anarcho-capitalist society based on voluntaryism or the non-aggression principle.
Origin
The phrase, as it is normally quoted in Latin, comes from the Satires of Juvenal, the 1st/2nd century Roman satirist. Although in its modern usage the phrase has universal, timeless applications to concepts such as tyrannical governments and uncontrollably oppressive dictatorships, in context within Juvenal's poem it refers to the impossibility of enforcing moral behaviour on women when the enforcers (custodes) are corruptible (Satire 6.346–348):
audio quid ueteres olim moneatis amici,
"pone seram, cohibe." sed quis custodiet ipsos—
custodes? cauta est et ab illis incipit uxor.
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I hear always the admonishment of my friends:
"Bolt her in, constrain her!" But who will guard
the guardians? The wife plans ahead and begins with them!.
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However, modern editors regard these three lines as an interpolation inserted into the text. In 1899 an undergraduate student at Oxford, E.O. Winstedt, discovered a manuscript (now known as O, for Oxoniensis) containing 34 lines which some believe to have been omitted from other texts of Juvenal's poem.[2] The debate on this manuscript is ongoing, but even if the poem is not by Juvenal, it is likely that it preserves the original context of the phrase.[3] If so, the original context is as follows (O 29–33):
… noui
consilia et ueteres quaecumque monetis amici,
"pone seram, cohibes." sed quis custodiet ipsos—
custodes? qui nunc lasciuae furta puellae
hac mercede silent crimen commune tacetur.
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… I know
the plan that my friends always advise me to adopt:
"Bolt her in, constrain her!" But who can watch
the watchmen? They keep quiet about the girl's
secrets and get her as their payment; everyone hushes it up.
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Notes
- Plato. The Republic. — Project Gutenberg, 2008. — «How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of which we lately spoke — just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city?».
- E.O. Winstedt 1899, "A Bodleian MS of Juvenal", Classical Review 13: 201–205.
- Recently J.D. Sosin 2000, "Ausonius' Juvenal and the Winstedt fragment", Classical Philology 95.2: 199–206 has argued for an early date for the poem.
References
External links
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