History can repeat itself. Why not philosophy?
November 30, 2016 8:48 AM   Subscribe

"Democratic man loves freedom; the desiring part rules his soul yet there is nothing but desire to distinguish which objects of desire to pursue and nothing to keep desire in check. The freedom that initially accompanies democracy makes it a possible home for all types of men, even philosophers, but according to Plato this very unrestrained freedom inevitably degenerates into mob rule and rampant license, a condition ripe for tyrannical man to step in as a demagogue promising order and change. Tyrannical man is the logical conclusion of this decline in the soul as he is completely a slave to his passions and projects his lack of self-mastery or self-control onto the world as a blind need to control others and satisfy his insatiable appetite."

Not sure I agree with every detail put forth by this gentleman scholar, or Plato for that matter, but it is food for thought given the recent election results.
posted by prepmonkey (26 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Careful, this may lead to the hard drugs.
posted by thelonius at 8:58 AM on November 30, 2016 [7 favorites]


Democratic Man, Democratic Man
Democratic Man loves Tyrannical Man
Please don't kill me, Tyrannical Man
Tyrannical Man
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:15 AM on November 30, 2016 [46 favorites]


This is the classical doctrine of anacyclosis, and this theory is the basis for a republic—a mixed form a government (including aspects of each of democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy), pitted against each other in order to (hopefully) safeguard against a failure of any one.

(Incidentally, I've always thought it bizarre that modern republics are always called democracies, since the whole point is that they're not democracies.)

At this point I'm not convinced that republics are any more stable than the forms of government they were intended to replace, though Rome did last an awfully long time.
posted by ragtag at 9:16 AM on November 30, 2016 [9 favorites]


prize bull octorok *accordion solo*
posted by SansPoint at 9:22 AM on November 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


Let's be careful about shitcanning the whole idea of democracy when it produces results we don't like, OK?

Especially since the recent unfortunate results of democracy in the U.S. actually involved widespread vote suppression, and an undemocratic Electoral College which weights rural voters strongly over urban voters. More democracy, not less, would have kept the current tyrant-elect out of office.
posted by edheil at 9:32 AM on November 30, 2016 [13 favorites]


Democratic Man, Democratic Man
Democratic Man loves Tyrannical Man
Please don't kill me, Tyrannical Man
Tyrannical Man


Who was the guy that was "usually kind to smaller man?" We need more of him.
posted by prepmonkey at 9:33 AM on November 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


A very linear, Calvinistic, deterministic etc point of view.

You guys have some problems with your electoral mechanism, that's all. You need to figure out a way to give population centers more weight in terms of votes. This is not a unique problem with an electoral system. However, the result of this imbalance--Donald Trump--is uniquely Americqn.
posted by My Dad at 9:37 AM on November 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


Plato's critique is directed at Athenian direct democracy, in which everyone with suffrage voted on everything. Athens had no written laws and no court system. Everyone voted on whether people accused of crimes were guilty, and on what the penalty would be. That is what happened to Socrates. The Athenians lost the Peloponnesian War because they were a naval power and lost their tempers and voted to execute their admirals because there had been a storm. If that is a sort of democracy anyone is interested in defending, so is a lynch mob.

The US government consists primarily of safeguards against direct democracy. One of them, the electoral college, just put the president into office, in fact.
posted by ckridge at 10:31 AM on November 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


ckridge: “The US government consists primarily of safeguards against direct democracy. One of them, the electoral college, just put the president into office, in fact.”

Er – no. The electoral college has absolutely not put the president into office. The electoral college doesn't meet and vote until December 19th.

It sounds like you're making the common mistake of conflating the electoral college with the disproportionate distribution of electoral votes. The disproportionate distribution of electoral votes is the reason the president-elect won more electoral votes. The disproportionate distribution of electoral votes is not in any sense a "safeguard against direct democracy." In fact, our method for selecting a president is purely democratic. A system where the populace votes, and the vote is respected by fiat and never departed from, is a purely democratic system, even if some votes are weighted more strongly than other votes.
posted by koeselitz at 10:53 AM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


(The electoral college might have been a "safeguard against direct democracy" – if it existed. But the United States has really never had an electoral college. Electors have always respected the votes of their electorate, and never deviated from them. It has literally never happened that an elector went against the popular vote in their state and instead chose someone they preferred as president. In the very rare instances where electors have voted contrary to their electorate, they have always cast useless "protest votes;" and these protest votes have never changed the outcome of an election. The "electoral college" is only an institution in name; in fact it is merely a rubber stamp for the popular vote, which is weighted artificially, but which is still a popular vote.)
posted by koeselitz at 10:56 AM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Benjamin Jowett 's analysis of The Republic covers the questionable historicity of the cyclical devolution of forms of government described by Plato in Book VIII.

The first of these declining States is timocracy, or the government of soldiers and lovers of honour, which answers to the Spartan State; [...] But there is obviously no connection between the manner in which the timocratic State springs out of the ideal, and the mere accident by which the timocratic man is the son of a retired statesman.

The two next stages in the decline of constitutions have even less historical foundation. For there is no trace in Greek history of a polity like the Spartan or Cretan passing into an oligarchy of wealth, or of the oligarchy of wealth passing into a democracy. The order of history appears to be different; first, in the Homeric times there is the royal or patriarchal form of government, which a century or two later was succeeded by an oligarchy of birth rather than of wealth, and in which wealth was only the accident of the hereditary possession of land and power. Sometimes this oligarchical government gave way to a government based upon a qualification of property, which, according to Aristotle’s mode of using words, would have been called a timocracy; and this in some cities, as at Athens, became the conducting medium to democracy. But such was not the necessary order of succession in States; nor, indeed, can any order be discerned in the endless fluctuation of Greek history (like the tides in the Euripus), except, perhaps, in the almost uniform tendency from monarchy to aristocracy in the earliest times. At first sight there appears to be a similar inversion in the last step of the Platonic succession; for tyranny, instead of being the natural end of democracy, in early Greek history appears rather as a stage leading to democracy; the reign of Peisistratus and his sons is an episode which comes between the legislation of Solon and the constitution of Cleisthenes; and some secret cause common to them all seems to have led the greater part of Hellas at her first appearance in the dawn of history, e.g. Athens, Argos, Corinth, Sicyon, and nearly every State with the exception of Sparta, through a similar stage of tyranny which ended either in oligarchy or democracy. But then we must remember that Plato is describing rather the contemporary governments of the Sicilian States, which alternated between democracy and tyranny, than the ancient history of Athens or Corinth.

[...]

Plato in a hyperbolical and serio-comic vein exaggerates the follies of democracy which he also sees reflected in social life. To him democracy is a state of individualism or dissolution; in which every one is doing what is right in his own eyes. Of a people animated by a common spirit of liberty, rising as one man to repel the Persian host, which is the leading idea of democracy in Herodotus and Thucydides, he never seems to think. But if he is not a believer in liberty, still less is he a lover of tyranny. His deeper and more serious condemnation is reserved for the tyrant, who is the ideal of wickedness and also of weakness, and who in his utter helplessness and suspiciousness is leading an almost impossible existence, without that remnant of good which, in Plato’s opinion, was required to give power to evil (Book I). This ideal of wickedness living in helpless misery, is the reverse of that other portrait of perfect injustice ruling in happiness and splendour, which first of all Thrasymachus, and afterwards the sons of Ariston had drawn, and is also the reverse of the king whose rule of life is the good of his subjects.

posted by smokysunday at 11:00 AM on November 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


Benjamin Jowett: “To him democracy is a state of individualism or dissolution; in which every one is doing what is right in his own eyes. Of a people animated by a common spirit of liberty, rising as one man to repel the Persian host, which is the leading idea of democracy in Herodotus and Thucydides, he never seems to think.”

You've got to hand it to Ben Jowett – it's not easy to so thoroughly misread Plato and Thucydides in just a few sentences.
posted by koeselitz at 11:18 AM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


The main problem with Plato's theories on government is they depend exclusively upon the moral quality of the Philosopher King. Get a bad king and you're screwed. Thus the only difference between the best and worst kind of regime is the kind of man who's in charge, and the only education that really matters is the education of that man. (And his guardian advisers.) Plato had no faith in the wisdom of the people as a whole, or desire to see the common lot improved. His idea of justice is when everyone knows their place and sticks to it.
posted by Kevin Street at 11:29 AM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


It has literally never happened that an elector went against the popular vote in their state and instead chose someone they preferred as president.

Your point is well taken but IIRC electors were sometimes appointed other than by popular vote before the early 1800s; I believe several states actually used the state legislature to appoint them.
posted by en forme de poire at 11:32 AM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Plato's critique is directed at Athenian direct democracy, in which everyone with suffrage voted on everything. Athens had no written laws and no court system. Everyone voted on whether people accused of crimes were guilty, and on what the penalty would be. That is what happened to Socrates. The Athenians lost the Peloponnesian War because they were a naval power and lost their tempers and voted to execute their admirals because there had been a storm. If that is a sort of democracy anyone is interested in defending, so is a lynch mob.

This is not true. Athens had many courts, and, in fact, there was nothing more the Athenians liked than suing each other and Athens was happy to help by paying jurors with the proceeds from their tribute and silver mines. Socrates was condemned at least in part, because a number of his students turned out very badly, some becoming oligarchs in Athens with the backing of Sparta after the Peloponnesian War. The Thirty Tyrants, as they were called, killed a lot of people before they were deposed. And the Athenians lost the war in large part because an aristrocratic egomaniac called Alcibdades (one of Socrates followers) persuaded them to undertake a large overseas invasion that was a total disaster. The fact that he flipped sides to Sparta when Athens tried to drag him back on a sacrilege charge doesn't make him look any better.

I'm not saying that Athenian democracy didn't have a lot of issues, most of them having to do with only free men with two citizens parents got to vote or have a say, but I'm not sure losing the war can be entirely put down to its sins. There's a lot of blame to go around.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 11:48 AM on November 30, 2016 [10 favorites]


Who was the guy that was "usually kind to smaller man?" We need more of him.

That was Universe Man. I think we can safely say that Universe Man has not, in fact, been kind this year.
posted by Fleebnork at 11:49 AM on November 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


(Also Athens had many written laws! Solon wasn't called the lawgiver for nothing... And Pericles added a few. Including the law about 2 citizen parents.)
posted by lesbiassparrow at 11:57 AM on November 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


"Socrates was condemned at least in part, because a number of his students turned out very badly, some becoming oligarchs in Athens with the backing of Sparta after the Peloponnesian War."

Yes. Apparently the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, Critias, personally intervened to save Socrates from execution during their reign. So afterwards a lot of people saw Socrates as a visible reminder of the terror. And since the the surviving Tyrants were still under Spartan protection and couldn't be prosecuted, they put Socrates on trial instead.
posted by Kevin Street at 12:08 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Kevin Street: “The main problem with Plato's theories on government is they depend exclusively upon the moral quality of the Philosopher King. Get a bad king and you're screwed. Thus the only difference between the best and worst kind of regime is the kind of man who's in charge, and the only education that really matters is the education of that man. (And his guardian advisers.) Plato had no faith in the wisdom of the people as a whole, or desire to see the common lot improved. His idea of justice is when everyone knows their place and sticks to it.”

The linked article above points out that it's "tempting" to read the Republic not as a treatise of "Plato's theories on government" but as a work about the soul and about justice. I'd go further: Plato's Republic is most decidedly not a collection of "Plato's theories on government." For one thing, it is a dialogue between interlocutors, not an essay; the people in it have different opinions, and Plato is not the same person as Socrates, and lived very differently from Socrates in fact. For another thing, the chief interlocutor was a real person whom Plato showed in his Apology as having been executed largely for his habit of irony – that is, of saying one thing and thinking another. So it's likely that there is plenty of irony in the Republic.

For what it's worth, the Laws, a longer dialogue and unfortunately one not as often read, seems much more like a serious attempt to describe an ideal Greek city. It features a democratic republic which votes regularly on candidates to fill positions, a relatively large amount of equality between men and women – property rights, voting, and participation in military defense – and compulsory education for all citizens. It does not feature Socrates, but a nameless "Athenian Stranger" speaking to a Cretan and a Spartan on the island of Crete.

As far as I can tell, there is no good textual support for the claim that "Plato had no faith in the people as a whole, or desire to see the common lot improved." Plato's characters say so many things about justice contrary to the idea that "justice is when everybody knows their place and sticks to it" that it is fairly clear this wasn't his doctrine.
posted by koeselitz at 12:13 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


Koeselitz, curious as to what you make of the guaranteed 3 electoral votes per state (regardless of size) then if not as a protection against direct democracy? While certainly the electors individually vote according to their states' popular votes, the guaranteed 3 votes per state means that the collective electoral votes will not necessarily correspond with the nation's popular vote (see Trump, Bush).

Maybe I am misunderstanding how you are using direct democracy, but, on the national scale, all individuals' votes neither count toward determining the president nor do they equal each other in weight.

A system that is designed to account for not just the votes of its national citizens but the votes of states seems (to me) plainly not a direct democracy.
posted by auggy at 2:06 PM on November 30, 2016


Possibly there's someone here who hasn't read Jo Walton's novels about an attempt at an actual Plato's Republic.
posted by clew at 2:14 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


curious as to what you make of the guaranteed 3 electoral votes per state (regardless of size) then if not as a protection against direct democracy?

I'm not koeselitz, but my understanding is that it's basically part of the Great Compromise - less a protection than a concession to convince small states to ratify the Constitution. The number of electors per state is the number of that state's seats in the House and Senate combined.
posted by me & my monkey at 5:22 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also Athens had many written laws!

We have a number of surviving (though doubtless edited to some degree) speeches given in the Athenian law courts. They actually refer to laws engraved on stones placed in prominent places that people could go and look at.

Athens is a fascinating case study of how an honor-based culture can substitute abstract conflict in the courts for physical violence as a means of settling disputes.
posted by praemunire at 5:48 PM on November 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


Isn't a philosopher king a benevolent dictator?
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:50 PM on December 1, 2016


Sort of. In Plato's conception the Philosopher King will always be working towards "the good," which is objectively determined as what is best for everybody, while a tyrant will only be interested in things that work for them personally. So the Philosopher King will make wise decisions and live modestly (even if they command thousands pf people), while the tyrant will almost inevitably fall into the trap of greed.
posted by Kevin Street at 2:04 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sold!!! Now where to find (and elect) one...
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:31 AM on December 3, 2016


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